Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

C >> Cory Doctorow >> Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12

On the last night, he presented me with a clever little handheld, a
museum piece that I recalled fondly from the dawning days of the Bitchun
Society. It had much of the functionality of my defunct systems, in a
package I could slip in my shirt pocket. It felt like part of a costume,
like the turnip watches the Ben Franklin streetmosphere players wore at
the American Adventure.

Museum piece or no, it meant that I was once again qualified to
participate in the Bitchun Society, albeit more slowly and less
efficiently than I once may've. I took it downstairs the next morning
and drove to the Magic Kingdom's castmember lot.

At least, that was the plan. When I got down to the Contemporary's
parking lot, my runabout was gone. A quick check with the handheld
revealed the worst: my Whuffie was low enough that someone had just
gotten inside and driven away, realizing that they could make more
popular use of it than I could.

With a sinking feeling, I trudged up to my room and swiped my key
through the lock. It emitted a soft, unsatisfied _bzzz_ and lit up,
"Please see the front desk." My room had been reassigned, too. I had the
short end of the Whuffie stick.

At least there was no mandatory Whuffie check on the monorail platform,
but the other people on the car were none too friendly to me, and no one
offered me an inch more personal space than was necessary. I had hit
bottom.

#

I took the castmember entrance to the Magic Kingdom, clipping my name
tag to my Disney Operations polo shirt, ignoring the glares of my fellow
castmembers in the utilidors.

I used the handheld to page Dan. "Hey there," he said, brightly. I could
tell instantly that I was being humored.

"Where are you?" I asked.

"Oh, up in the Square. By the Liberty Tree."

In front of the Hall of Presidents. I worked the handheld, pinged some
Whuffie manually. Debra was spiked so high it seemed she'd never come
down, as were Tim and her whole crew in aggregate. They were drawing
from guests by the millions, and from castmembers and from people who'd
read the popular accounts of their struggle against the forces of petty
jealousy and sabotage -- i.e., me.

I felt light-headed. I hurried along to costuming and changed into the
heavy green Mansion costume, then ran up the stairs to the Square.

I found Dan sipping a coffee and sitting on a bench under the giant,
lantern-hung Liberty Tree. He had a second cup waiting for me, and
patted the bench next to him. I sat with him and sipped, waiting for him
to spill whatever bit of rotten news he had for me this morning -- I
could feel it hovering like storm clouds.

He wouldn't talk though, not until we finished the coffee. Then he stood
and strolled over to the Mansion. It wasn't rope-drop yet, and there
weren't any guests in the Park, which was all for the better, given what
was coming next.

"Have you taken a look at Debra's Whuffie lately?" he asked, finally, as
we stood by the pet cemetery, considering the empty scaffolding.

I started to pull out the handheld but he put a hand on my arm. "Don't
bother," he said, morosely. "Suffice it to say, Debra's gang is number
one with a bullet. Ever since word got out about what happened to the
Hall, they've been stacking it deep. They can do just about anything,
Jules, and get away with it."

My stomach tightened and I found myself grinding my molars. "So, what is
it they've done, Dan?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

Dan didn't have to respond, because at that moment, Tim emerged from the
Mansion, wearing a light cotton work-smock. He had a thoughtful
expression, and when he saw us, he beamed his elfin grin and came over.

"Hey guys!" he said.

"Hi, Tim," Dan said. I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

"Pretty exciting stuff, huh?" he said.

"I haven't told him yet," Dan said, with forced lightness. "Why don't
you run it down?"

"Well, it's pretty radical, I have to admit. We've learned some stuff
from the Hall that we wanted to apply, and at the same time, we wanted
to capture some of the historical character of the ghost story."

I opened my mouth to object, but Dan put a hand on my forearm. "Really?"
he asked innocently. "How do you plan on doing that?"

"Well, we're keeping the telepresence robots -- that's a honey of an
idea, Julius -- but we're giving each one an uplink so that it can
flash-bake. We've got some high-Whuffie horror writers pulling together
a series of narratives about the lives of each ghost: how they met their
tragic ends, what they've done since, you know.

"The way we've storyboarded it, the guests stream through the ride
pretty much the way they do now, walking through the preshow and then
getting into the ride-vehicles, the Doom Buggies. But here's the big
change: we _slow it all down_. We trade off throughput for intensity,
make it more of a premium product.

"So you're a guest. From the queue to the unload zone, you're being
chased by these ghosts, these telepresence robots, and they're really
scary -- I've got Suneep's concept artists going back to the drawing
board, hitting basic research on stuff that'll just scare the guests
silly. When a ghost catches you, lays its hands on you -- wham! Flash-
bake! You get its whole grisly story in three seconds, across your
frontal lobe. By the time you've left, you've had ten or more ghost-
contacts, and the next time you come back, it's all new ghosts with all
new stories. The way that the Hall's drawing 'em, we're bound to be a
hit." He put his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels, clearly
proud of himself.

When Epcot Center first opened, long, long ago, there'd been an ugly
decade or so in ride design. Imagineering found a winning formula for
Spaceship Earth, the flagship ride in the big golf ball, and, in their
drive to establish thematic continuity, they'd turned the formula into a
cookie-cutter, stamping out half a dozen clones for each of the "themed"
areas in the Future Showcase. It went like this: first, we were cavemen,
then there was ancient Greece, then Rome burned (cue sulfur-odor FX),
then there was the Great Depression, and, finally, we reached the modern
age. Who knows what the future holds? We do! We'll all have videophones
and be living on the ocean floor. Once was cute -- compelling and
inspirational, even -- but six times was embarrassing. Like everyone,
once Imagineering got themselves a good hammer, everything started to
resemble a nail. Even now, the Epcot ad-hocs were repeating the sins of
their forebears, closing every ride with a scene of Bitchun utopia.

And Debra was repeating the classic mistake, tearing her way through the
Magic Kingdom with her blaster set to flash-bake.

"Tim," I said, hearing the tremble in my voice. "I thought you said that
you had no designs on the Mansion, that you and Debra wouldn't be trying
to take it away from us. Didn't you say that?"

Tim rocked back as if I'd slapped him and the blood drained from his
face. "But we're not taking it away!" he said. "You _invited_ us to
help."

I shook my head, confused. "We did?" I said.

"Sure," he said.

"Yes," Dan said. "Kim and some of the other rehab cast went to Debra
yesterday and asked her to do a design review of the current rehab and
suggest any changes. She was good enough to agree, and they've come up
with some great ideas." I read between the lines: the newbies you
invited in have gone over to the other side and we're going to lose
everything because of them. I felt like shit.

"Well, I stand corrected," I said, carefully. Tim's grin came back and
he clapped his hands together. _He really loves the Mansion_, I thought.
_He could have been on our side, if we had only played it all right._

#

Dan and I took to the utilidors and grabbed a pair of bicycles and sped
towards Suneep's lab, jangling our bells at the rushing castmembers.
"They don't have the authority to invite Debra in," I panted as we
pedaled.

"Says who?" Dan said.

"It was part of the deal -- they knew that they were probationary
members right from the start. They weren't even allowed into the design
meetings."

"Looks like they took themselves off probation," he said.

Suneep gave us both a chilly look when we entered his lab. He had dark
circles under his eyes and his hands shook with exhaustion. He seemed to
be holding himself erect with nothing more than raw anger.

"So much for building without interference," he said. "We agreed that
this project wouldn't change midway through. Now it has, and I've got
other commitments that I'm going to have to cancel because this is going
off-schedule."

I made soothing apologetic gestures with my hands. "Suneep, believe me,
I'm just as upset about this as you are. We don't like this one little
bit."

He harrumphed. "We had a deal, Julius," he said, hotly. "I would do the
rehab for you and you would keep the ad-hocs off my back. I've been
holding up my end of the bargain, but where the hell have you been? If
they replan the rehab now, I'll _have_ to go along with them. I can't
just leave the Mansion half-done -- they'll murder me."

The kernel of a plan formed in my mind. "Suneep, we don't like the new
rehab plan, and we're going to stop it. You can help. Just stonewall
them -- tell them they'll have to find other Imagineering support if
they want to go through with it, that you're booked solid."

Dan gave me one of his long, considering looks, then nodded a minute
approval. "Yeah," he drawled. "That'll help all right. Just tell 'em
that they're welcome to make any changes they want to the plan, _if_
they can find someone else to execute them."

Suneep looked unhappy. "Fine -- so then they go and find someone else to
do it, and that person gets all the credit for the work my team's done
so far. I just flush my time down the toilet."

"It won't come to that," I said quickly. "If you can just keep saying no
for a couple days, we'll do the rest."

Suneep looked doubtful.

"I promise," I said.

Suneep ran his stubby fingers through his already crazed hair. "All
right," he said, morosely.

Dan slapped him on the back. "Good man," he said.

#

It should have worked. It almost did.

I sat in the back of the Adventureland conference room while Dan
exhorted.

"Look, you don't have to roll over for Debra and her people! This is
_your_ garden, and you've tended it responsibly for years. She's got no
right to move in on you -- you've got all the Whuffie you need to defend
the place, if you all work together."

No castmember likes confrontation, and the Liberty Square bunch were
tough to rouse to action. Dan had turned down the air conditioning an
hour before the meeting and closed up all the windows, so that the room
was a kiln for hard-firing irritation into rage. I stood meekly in the
back, as far as possible from Dan. He was working his magic on my
behalf, and I was content to let him do his thing.

When Lil had arrived, she'd sized up the situation with a sour
expression: sit in the front, near Dan, or in the back, near me. She'd
chosen the middle, and to concentrate on Dan I had to tear my eyes away
from the sweat glistening on her long, pale neck.

Dan stalked the aisles like a preacher, eyes blazing. "They're
_stealing_ your future! They're _stealing_ your _past_! They claim
they've got your support!"

He lowered his tone. "I don't think that's true." He grabbed a
castmember by her hand and looked into her eyes. "Is it true?" he said
so low it was almost a whisper.

"No," the castmember said.

He dropped her hand and whirled to face another castmember. "Is it
true?" he demanded, raising his voice, slightly.

"No!" the castmember said, his voice unnaturally loud after the
whispers. A nervous chuckle rippled through the crowd.

"Is it true?" he said, striding to the podium, shouting now.

"No!" the crowd roared.

"NO!" he shouted back.

"You don't _have to_ roll over and take it! You can fight back, carry on
with the plan, send them packing. They're only taking over because
you're letting them. Are you going to let them?"

"NO!"

#

Bitchun wars are rare. Long before anyone tries a takeover of anything,
they've done the arithmetic and ensured themselves that the ad-hoc
they're displacing doesn't have a hope of fighting back.

For the defenders, it's a simple decision: step down gracefully and
salvage some reputation out of the thing -- fighting back will surely
burn away even that meager reward.

No one benefits from fighting back -- least of all the thing everyone's
fighting over. For example:

It was the second year of my undergrad, taking a double-major in not
making trouble for my profs and keeping my mouth shut. It was the early
days of Bitchun, and most of us were still a little unclear on the
concept.

Not all of us, though: a group of campus shit-disturbers, grad students
in the Sociology Department, were on the bleeding edge of the
revolution, and they knew what they wanted: control of the Department,
oustering of the tyrannical, stodgy profs, a bully pulpit from which to
preach the Bitchun gospel to a generation of impressionable undergrads
who were too cowed by their workloads to realize what a load of shit
they were being fed by the University.

At least, that's what the intense, heavyset woman who seized the mic at
my Soc 200 course said, that sleepy morning mid-semester at Convocation
Hall. Nineteen hundred students filled the hall, a capacity crowd of
bleary, coffee-sipping time-markers, and they woke up in a hurry when
the woman's strident harangue burst over their heads.

I saw it happen from the very start. The prof was down there on the
stage, a speck with a tie-mic, droning over his slides, and then there
was a blur as half a dozen grad students rushed the stage. They were
dressed in University poverty-chic, wrinkled slacks and tattered sports
coats, and five of them formed a human wall in front of the prof while
the sixth, the heavyset one with the dark hair and the prominent mole on
her cheek, unclipped his mic and clipped it to her lapel.

"Wakey wakey!" she called, and the reality of the moment hit home for
me: this wasn't on the lesson-plan.

"Come on, heads up! This is _not_ a drill. The University of Toronto
Department of Sociology is under new management. If you'll set your
handhelds to 'receive,' we'll be beaming out new lesson-plans
momentarily. If you've forgotten your handhelds, you can download the
plans later on. I'm going to run it down for you right now, anyway.

"Before I start though, I have a prepared statement for you. You'll
probably hear this a couple times more today, in your other classes.
It's worth repeating. Here goes:

"We reject the stodgy, tyrannical rule of the profs at this Department.
We demand bully pulpits from which to preach the Bitchun gospel.
Effective immediately, the University of Toronto Ad-Hoc Sociology
Department is _in charge_. We promise high-relevance curriculum with an
emphasis on reputation economies, post-scarcity social dynamics, and the
social theory of infinite life-extension. No more Durkheim, kids, just
deadheading! This will be _fun_."

She taught the course like a pro -- you could tell she'd been drilling
her lecture for a while. Periodically, the human wall behind her
shuddered as the prof made a break for it and was restrained.

At precisely 9:50 a.m. she dismissed the class, which had hung on her
every word. Instead of trudging out and ambling to our next class, the
whole nineteen hundred of us rose, and, as one, started buzzing to our
neighbors, a roar of "Can you believe it?" that followed us out the door
and to our next encounter with the Ad-Hoc Sociology Department.

It was cool, that day. I had another soc class, Constructing Social
Deviance, and we got the same drill there, the same stirring propaganda,
the same comical sight of a tenured prof battering himself against a
human wall of ad-hocs.

Reporters pounced on us when we left the class, jabbing at us with mics
and peppering us with questions. I gave them a big thumbs-up and said,
"Bitchun!" in classic undergrad eloquence.

The profs struck back the next morning. I got a heads-up from the
newscast as I brushed my teeth: the Dean of the Department of Sociology
told a reporter that the ad-hocs' courses would not be credited, that
they were a gang of thugs who were totally unqualified to teach. A
counterpoint interview from a spokesperson for the ad-hocs established
that all of the new lecturers had been writing course-plans and lecture
notes for the profs they replaced for years, and that they'd also
written most of their journal articles.

The profs brought University security out to help them regain their
lecterns, only to be repelled by ad-hoc security guards in homemade
uniforms. University security got the message -- anyone could be
replaced -- and stayed away.

The profs picketed. They held classes out front attended by grade-
conscious brown-nosers who worried that the ad-hocs' classes wouldn't
count towards their degrees. Fools like me alternated between the
outdoor and indoor classes, not learning much of anything.

No one did. The profs spent their course-times whoring for Whuffie,
leading the seminars like encounter groups instead of lectures. The
ad-hocs spent their time badmouthing the profs and tearing apart their
coursework.

At the end of the semester, everyone got a credit and the University
Senate disbanded the Sociology program in favor of a distance-ed
offering from Concordia in Montreal. Forty years later, the fight was
settled forever. Once you took backup-and-restore, the rest of the
Bitchunry just followed, a value-system settling over you.

Those who didn't take backup-and-restore may have objected, but, hey,
they all died.

#

The Liberty Square ad-hocs marched shoulder to shoulder through the
utilidors and, as a mass, took back the Haunted Mansion. Dan, Lil and I
were up front, careful not to brush against one another as we walked
quickly through the backstage door and started a bucket-brigade, passing
out the materials that Debra's people had stashed there, along a line
that snaked back to the front porch of the Hall of Presidents, where
they were unceremoniously dumped.

Once the main stash was vacated, we split up and roamed the ride, its
service corridors and dioramas, the break-room and the secret passages,
rounding up every scrap of Debra's crap and passing it out the door.

In the attic scene, I ran into Kim and three of her giggly little
friends, their eyes glinting in the dim light. The gaggle of transhuman
kids made my guts clench, made me think of Zed and of Lil and of my
unmediated brain, and I had a sudden urge to shred them verbally.

No.

No. That way lay madness and war. This was about taking back what was
ours, not punishing the interlopers. "Kim, I think you should leave," I
said, quietly.

She snorted and gave me a dire look. "Who died and made you boss?" she
said. Her friends thought it very brave, they made it clear with double-
jointed hip-thrusts and glares.

"Kim, you can leave now or you can leave later. The longer you wait, the
worse it will be for you and your Whuffie. You blew it, and you're not a
part of the Mansion anymore. Go home, go to Debra. Don't stay here, and
don't come back. Ever."

Ever. Be cast out of this thing that you love, that you obsess over,
that you worked for. "Now," I said, quiet, dangerous, barely in control.

They sauntered into the graveyard, hissing vitriol at me. Oh, they had
lots of new material to post to the anti-me sites, messages that would
get them Whuffie with people who thought I was the scum of the earth. A
popular view, those days.

I got out of the Mansion and looked at the bucket-brigade, followed it
to the front of the Hall. The Park had been open for an hour, and a herd
of guests watched the proceedings in confusion. The Liberty Square
ad-hocs passed their loads around in clear embarrassment, knowing that they
were violating every principle they cared about.

As I watched, gaps appeared in the bucket-brigade as castmembers slipped
away, faces burning scarlet with shame. At the Hall of Presidents, Debra
presided over an orderly relocation of her things, a cheerful cadre of
her castmembers quickly moving it all offstage. I didn't have to look at
my handheld to know what was happening to our Whuffie.

#

By evening, we were back on schedule. Suneep supervised the placement of
his telepresence rigs and Lil went over every system in minute detail,
bossing a crew of ad-hocs that trailed behind her, double- and triple-
checking it all.

Suneep smiled at me when he caught sight of me, hand-scattering dust in
the parlor.

"Congratulations, sir," he said, and shook my hand. "It was masterfully
done."

"Thanks, Suneep. I'm not sure how masterful it was, but we got the job
done, and that's what counts."

"Your partners, they're happier than I've seen them since this whole
business started. I know how they feel!"

My partners? Oh, yes, Dan and Lil. How happy were they, I wondered.
Happy enough to get back together? My mood fell, even though a part of
me said that Dan would never go back to her, not after all we'd been
through together.

"I'm glad you're glad. We couldn't have done it without you, and it
looks like we'll be open for business in a week."

"Oh, I should think so. Are you coming to the party tonight?"

Party? Probably something the Liberty Square ad-hocs were putting on. I
would almost certainly be persona non grata. "I don't think so," I said,
carefully. "I'll probably work late here."

He chided me for working too hard, but once he saw that I had no
intention of being dragged to the party, he left off.

And that's how I came to be in the Mansion at 2 a.m. the next morning,
dozing in a backstage break room when I heard a commotion from the
parlor. Festive voices, happy and loud, and I assumed it was Liberty
Square ad-hocs coming back from their party.

I roused myself and entered the parlor.

Kim and her friends were there, pushing hand-trucks of Debra's gear. I
got ready to shout something horrible at them, and that's when Debra
came in. I moderated the shout to a snap, opened my mouth to speak,
stopped.

Behind Debra were Lil's parents, frozen these long years in their
canopic jars in Kissimmee.

========= CHAPTER 9 =========

Lil's parents went into their jars with little ceremony. I saw them just
before they went in, when they stopped in at Lil's and my place to kiss
her goodbye and wish her well.

Tom and I stood awkwardly to the side while Lil and her mother held an
achingly chipper and polite farewell.

"So," I said to Tom. "Deadheading."

He cocked an eyebrow. "Yup. Took the backup this morning."

Before coming to see their daughter, they'd taken their backups. When
they woke, this event -- everything following the backup -- would never
have happened for them.

God, they were bastards.

"When are you coming back?" I asked, keeping my castmember face on,
carefully hiding away the disgust.

"We'll be sampling monthly, just getting a digest dumped to us. When
things look interesting enough, we'll come on back." He waggled a finger
at me. "I'll be keeping an eye on you and Lillian -- you treat her
right, you hear?"

"We're sure going to miss you two around here," I said.

He pishtoshed and said, "You won't even notice we're gone. This is your
world now -- we're just getting out of the way for a while, letting
you-all take a run at it. We wouldn't be going down if we didn't have
faith in you two."

Lil and her mom kissed one last time. Her mother was more affectionate
than I'd ever seen her, even to the point of tearing up a little. Here
in this moment of vanishing consciousness, she could be whomever she
wanted, knowing that it wouldn't matter the next time she awoke.

"Julius," she said, taking my hands, squeezing them. "You've got some
wonderful times ahead of you -- between Lil and the Park, you're going
to have a tremendous experience, I just know it." She was infinitely
serene and compassionate, and I knew it didn't count.

Still smiling, they got into their runabout and drove away to get the
lethal injections, to become disembodied consciousnesses, to lose their
last moments with their darling daughter.

#

They were not happy to be returned from the dead. Their new bodies were
impossibly young, pubescent and hormonal and doleful and kitted out in
the latest trendy styles. In the company of Kim and her pals, they made
a solid mass of irate adolescence.

"Just what the hell do you think you're doing?" Rita asked, shoving me
hard in the chest. I stumbled back into my carefully scattered dust,
raising a cloud.

Rita came after me, but Tom held her back. "Julius, go away. Your
actions are totally indefensible. Keep your mouth shut and go away."

I held up a hand, tried to wave away his words, opened my mouth to
speak.

"Don't say a word," he said. "Leave. Now."

"_Don't stay here and don't come back. Ever_," Kim said, an evil look on
her face.

"No," I said. "No goddamn it no. You're going to hear me out, and then
I'm going to get Lil and her people and they're going to back me up.
That's not negotiable."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12