Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

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

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"Brother, that's committing half-assed suicide. The way we're going,
they'll be lucky if someone doesn't just switch 'em off when it comes
time to reanimate. In case you haven't noticed, it's getting a little
crowded around here."

I made pish-tosh sounds and wiped off my forehead with a bar-napkin --
the Gazoo was beastly hot on summer nights. "Uh-huh, just like the world
was getting a little crowded a hundred years ago, before Free Energy.
Like it was getting too greenhousey, too nukey, too hot or too cold. We
fixed it then, we'll fix it again when the time comes. I'm gonna be here
in ten thousand years, you damn betcha, but I think I'll do it the long
way around."

He cocked his head again, and gave it some thought. If it had been any
of the other grad students, I'd have assumed he was grepping for some
bolstering factoids to support his next sally. But with him, I just knew
he was thinking about it, the old-fashioned way.

"I think that if I'm still here in ten thousand years, I'm going to be
crazy as hell. Ten thousand years, pal! Ten thousand years ago, the
state-of-the-art was a goat. You really think you're going to be
anything recognizably human in a hundred centuries? Me, I'm not
interested in being a post-person. I'm going to wake up one day, and I'm
going to say, 'Well, I guess I've seen about enough,' and that'll be my
last day."

I had seen where he was going with this, and I had stopped paying
attention while I readied my response. I probably should have paid more
attention. "But why? Why not just deadhead for a few centuries, see if
there's anything that takes your fancy, and if not, back to sleep for a
few more? Why do anything so _final_?"

He embarrassed me by making a show of thinking it over again, making me
feel like I was just a half-pissed glib poltroon. "I suppose it's
because nothing else is. I've always known that someday, I was going to
stop moving, stop seeking, stop kicking, and have done with it. There'll
come a day when I don't have anything left to do, except stop."

#

On campus, they called him Keep-A-Movin' Dan, because of his cowboy vibe
and because of his lifestyle, and he somehow grew to take over every
conversation I had for the next six months. I pinged his Whuffie a few
times, and noticed that it was climbing steadily upward as he
accumulated more esteem from the people he met.

I'd pretty much pissed away most of my Whuffie -- all the savings from
the symphonies and the first three theses -- drinking myself stupid at
the Gazoo, hogging library terminals, pestering profs, until I'd
expended all the respect anyone had ever afforded me. All except Dan,
who, for some reason, stood me to regular beers and meals and movies.

I got to feeling like I was someone special -- not everyone had a chum
as exotic as Keep-A-Movin' Dan, the legendary missionary who visited the
only places left that were closed to the Bitchun Society. I can't say
for sure why he hung around with me. He mentioned once or twice that
he'd liked my symphonies, and he'd read my Ergonomics thesis on applying
theme-park crowd-control techniques in urban settings, and liked what I
had to say there. But I think it came down to us having a good time
needling each other.

I'd talk to him about the vast carpet of the future unrolling before us,
of the certainty that we would encounter alien intelligences some day,
of the unimaginable frontiers open to each of us. He'd tell me that
deadheading was a strong indicator that one's personal reservoir of
introspection and creativity was dry; and that without struggle, there
is no real victory.

This was a good fight, one we could have a thousand times without
resolving. I'd get him to concede that Whuffie recaptured the true
essence of money: in the old days, if you were broke but respected, you
wouldn't starve; contrariwise, if you were rich and hated, no sum could
buy you security and peace. By measuring the thing that money really
represented -- your personal capital with your friends and neighbors --
you more accurately gauged your success.

And then he'd lead me down a subtle, carefully baited trail that led to
my allowing that while, yes, we might someday encounter alien species
with wild and fabulous ways, that right now, there was a slightly
depressing homogeneity to the world.

On a fine spring day, I defended my thesis to two embodied humans and
one prof whose body was out for an overhaul, whose consciousness was
present via speakerphone from the computer where it was resting. They
all liked it. I collected my sheepskin and went out hunting for Dan in
the sweet, flower-stinking streets.

He'd gone. The Anthro major he'd been torturing with his war-stories
said that they'd wrapped up that morning, and he'd headed to the walled
city of Tijuana, to take his shot with the descendants of a platoon of
US Marines who'd settled there and cut themselves off from the Bitchun
Society.

So I went to Disney World.

In deference to Dan, I took the flight in realtime, in the minuscule
cabin reserved for those of us who stubbornly refused to be frozen and
stacked like cordwood for the two hour flight. I was the only one taking
the trip in realtime, but a flight attendant dutifully served me a
urine-sample-sized orange juice and a rubbery, pungent, cheese omelet. I
stared out the windows at the infinite clouds while the autopilot banked
around the turbulence, and wondered when I'd see Dan next.

========= CHAPTER 1 =========

My girlfriend was 15 percent of my age, and I was old-fashioned enough
that it bugged me. Her name was Lil, and she was second-generation
Disney World, her parents being among the original ad-hocracy that took
over the management of Liberty Square and Tom Sawyer Island. She was,
quite literally, raised in Walt Disney World and it showed.

It showed. She was neat and efficient in her every little thing, from
her shining red hair to her careful accounting of each gear and cog in
the animatronics that were in her charge. Her folks were in canopic jars
in Kissimmee, deadheading for a few centuries.

On a muggy Wednesday, we dangled our feet over the edge of the Liberty
Belle's riverboat pier, watching the listless Confederate flag over Fort
Langhorn on Tom Sawyer Island by moonlight. The Magic Kingdom was all
closed up and every last guest had been chased out the gate underneath
the Main Street train station, and we were able to breathe a heavy sigh
of relief, shuck parts of our costumes, and relax together while the
cicadas sang.

I was more than a century old, but there was still a kind of magic in
having my arm around the warm, fine shoulders of a girl by moonlight,
hidden from the hustle of the cleaning teams by the turnstiles,
breathing the warm, moist air. Lil plumped her head against my shoulder
and gave me a butterfly kiss under my jaw.

"Her name was McGill," I sang, gently.

"But she called herself Lil," she sang, warm breath on my collarbones.

"And everyone knew her as Nancy," I sang.

I'd been startled to know that she knew the Beatles. They'd been old
news in my youth, after all. But her parents had given her a thorough --
if eclectic -- education.

"Want to do a walk-through?" she asked. It was one of her favorite
duties, exploring every inch of the rides in her care with the lights
on, after the horde of tourists had gone. We both liked to see the
underpinnings of the magic. Maybe that was why I kept picking at the
relationship.

"I'm a little pooped. Let's sit a while longer, if you don't mind."

She heaved a dramatic sigh. "Oh, all right. Old man." She reached up and
gently tweaked my nipple, and I gave a satisfying little jump. I think
the age difference bothered her, too, though she teased me for letting
it get to me.

"I think I'll be able to manage a totter through the Haunted Mansion, if
you just give me a moment to rest my bursitis." I felt her smile against
my shirt. She loved the Mansion; loved to turn on the ballroom ghosts
and dance their waltz with them on the dusty floor, loved to try and
stare down the marble busts in the library that followed your gaze as
you passed.

I liked it too, but I really liked just sitting there with her, watching
the water and the trees. I was just getting ready to go when I heard a
soft _ping_ inside my cochlea. "Damn," I said. "I've got a call."

"Tell them you're busy," she said.

"I will," I said, and answered the call subvocally. "Julius here."

"Hi, Julius. It's Dan. You got a minute?"

I knew a thousand Dans, but I recognized the voice immediately, though
it'd been ten years since we last got drunk at the Gazoo together. I
muted the subvocal and said, "Lil, I've got to take this. Do you mind?"

"Oh, _no_, not at all," she sarcased at me. She sat up and pulled out
her crack pipe and lit up.

"Dan," I subvocalized, "long time no speak."

"Yeah, buddy, it sure has been," he said, and his voice cracked on a
sob.

I turned and gave Lil such a look, she dropped her pipe. "How can I
help?" she said, softly but swiftly. I waved her off and switched the
phone to full-vocal mode. My voice sounded unnaturally loud in the
cricket-punctuated calm.

"Where you at, Dan?" I asked.

"Down here, in Orlando. I'm stuck out on Pleasure Island."

"All right," I said. "Meet me at, uh, the Adventurer's Club, upstairs on
the couch by the door. I'll be there in --" I shot a look at Lil, who
knew the castmember-only roads better than I. She flashed ten fingers at
me. "Ten minutes."

"Okay," he said. "Sorry." He had his voice back under control. I
switched off.

"What's up?" Lil asked.

"I'm not sure. An old friend is in town. He sounds like he's got a
problem."

Lil pointed a finger at me and made a trigger-squeezing gesture.
"There," she said. "I've just dumped the best route to Pleasure Island
to your public directory. Keep me in the loop, okay?"

I set off for the utilidoor entrance near the Hall of Presidents and
booted down the stairs to the hum of the underground tunnel-system. I
took the slidewalk to cast parking and zipped my little cart out to
Pleasure Island.

#

I found Dan sitting on the L-shaped couch underneath rows of faked-up
trophy shots with humorous captions. Downstairs, castmembers were
working the animatronic masks and idols, chattering with the guests.

Dan was apparent fifty plus, a little paunchy and stubbled. He had
raccoon-mask bags under his eyes and he slumped listlessly. As I
approached, I pinged his Whuffie and was startled to see that it had
dropped to nearly zero.

"Jesus," I said, as I sat down next to him. "You look like hell, Dan."

He nodded. "Appearances can be deceptive," he said. "But in this case,
they're bang-on."

"You want to talk about it?" I asked.

"Somewhere else, huh? I hear they ring in the New Year every night at
midnight; I think that'd be a little too much for me right now."

I led him out to my cart and cruised back to the place I shared with
Lil, out in Kissimmee. He smoked eight cigarettes on the twenty minute
ride, hammering one after another into his mouth, filling my runabout
with stinging clouds. I kept glancing at him in the rear-view. He had
his eyes closed, and in repose he looked dead. I could hardly believe
that this was my vibrant action-hero pal of yore.

Surreptitiously, I called Lil's phone. "I'm bringing him home," I
subvocalized. "He's in rough shape. Not sure what it's all about."

"I'll make up the couch," she said. "And get some coffee together. Love
you."

"Back atcha, kid," I said.

As we approached the tacky little swaybacked ranch-house, he opened his
eyes. "You're a pal, Jules." I waved him off. "No, really. I tried to
think of who I could call, and you were the only one. I've missed you,
bud."

"Lil said she'd put some coffee on," I said. "You sound like you need
it."

Lil was waiting on the sofa, a folded blanket and an extra pillow on the
side table, a pot of coffee and some Disneyland Beijing mugs beside
them. She stood and extended her hand. "I'm Lil," she said.

"Dan," he said. "It's a pleasure."

I knew she was pinging his Whuffie and I caught her look of surprised
disapproval. Us oldsters who predate Whuffie know that it's important;
but to the kids, it's the _world_. Someone without any is automatically
suspect. I watched her recover quickly, smile, and surreptitiously wipe
her hand on her jeans. "Coffee?" she said.

"Oh, yeah," Dan said, and slumped on the sofa.

She poured him a cup and set it on a coaster on the coffee table. "I'll
let you boys catch up, then," she said, and started for the bedroom.

"No," Dan said. "Wait. If you don't mind. I think it'd help if I could
talk to someone. . . younger, too."

She set her face in the look of chirpy helpfulness that all the second-
gen castmembers have at their instant disposal and settled into an
armchair. She pulled out her pipe and lit a rock. I went through my
crack period before she was born, just after they made it decaf, and I
always felt old when I saw her and her friends light up. Dan surprised
me by holding out a hand to her and taking the pipe. He toked heavily,
then passed it back.

Dan closed his eyes again, then ground his fists into them, sipped his
coffee. It was clear he was trying to figure out where to start.

"I believed that I was braver than I really am, is what it boils down
to," he said.

"Who doesn't?" I said.

"I really thought I could do it. I knew that someday I'd run out of
things to do, things to see. I knew that I'd finish some day. You
remember, we used to argue about it. I swore I'd be done, and that would
be the end of it. And now I am. There isn't a single place left on-world
that isn't part of the Bitchun Society. There isn't a single thing left
that I want any part of."

"So deadhead for a few centuries," I said. "Put the decision off."

"No!" he shouted, startling both of us. "I'm _done_. It's _over_."

"So do it," Lil said.

"I _can't_," he sobbed, and buried his face in his hands. He cried like
a baby, in great, snoring sobs that shook his whole body. Lil went into
the kitchen and got some tissue, and passed it to me. I sat alongside
him and awkwardly patted his back.

"Jesus," he said, into his palms. "Jesus."

"Dan?" I said, quietly.

He sat up and took the tissue, wiped off his face and hands. "Thanks,"
he said. "I've tried to make a go of it, really I have. I've spent the
last eight years in Istanbul, writing papers on my missions, about the
communities. I did some followup studies, interviews. No one was
interested. Not even me. I smoked a lot of hash. It didn't help. So, one
morning I woke up and went to the bazaar and said good bye to the
friends I'd made there. Then I went to a pharmacy and had the man make
me up a lethal injection. He wished me good luck and I went back to my
rooms. I sat there with the hypo all afternoon, then I decided to sleep
on it, and I got up the next morning and did it all over again. I looked
inside myself, and I saw that I didn't have the guts. I just didn't have
the guts. I've stared down the barrels of a hundred guns, had a thousand
knives pressed up against my throat, but I didn't have the guts to press
that button."

"You were too late," Lil said.

We both turned to look at her.

"You were a decade too late. Look at you. You're pathetic. If you killed
yourself right now, you'd just be a washed-up loser who couldn't hack
it. If you'd done it ten years earlier, you would've been going out on
top -- a champion, retiring permanently." She set her mug down with a
harder-than-necessary clunk.

Sometimes, Lil and I are right on the same wavelength. Sometimes, it's
like she's on a different planet. All I could do was sit there,
horrified, and she was happy to discuss the timing of my pal's suicide.

But she was right. Dan nodded heavily, and I saw that he knew it, too.

"A day late and a dollar short," he sighed.

"Well, don't just sit there," she said. "You know what you've got to
do."

"What?" I said, involuntarily irritated by her tone.

She looked at me like I was being deliberately stupid. "He's got to get
back on top. Cleaned up, dried out, into some productive work. Get that
Whuffie up, too. _Then_ he can kill himself with dignity."

It was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard. Dan, though, was cocking an
eyebrow at her and thinking hard. "How old did you say you were?" he
asked.

"Twenty-three," she said.

"Wish I'd had your smarts at twenty-three," he said, and heaved a sigh,
straightening up. "Can I stay here while I get the job done?"

I looked askance at Lil, who considered for a moment, then nodded.

"Sure, pal, sure," I said. I clapped him on the shoulder. "You look
beat."

"Beat doesn't begin to cover it," he said.

"Good night, then," I said.

========= CHAPTER 2 =========

Ad-hocracy works well, for the most part. Lil's folks had taken over the
running of Liberty Square with a group of other interested, compatible
souls. They did a fine job, racked up gobs of Whuffie, and anyone who
came around and tried to take it over would be so reviled by the guests
they wouldn't find a pot to piss in. Or they'd have such a wicked,
radical approach that they'd ouster Lil's parents and their pals, and do
a better job.

It can break down, though. There were pretenders to the throne -- a
group who'd worked with the original ad-hocracy and then had moved off
to other pursuits -- some of them had gone to school, some of them had
made movies, written books, or gone off to Disneyland Beijing to help
start things up. A few had deadheaded for a couple decades.

They came back to Liberty Square with a message: update the attractions.
The Liberty Square ad-hocs were the staunchest conservatives in the
Magic Kingdom, preserving the wheezing technology in the face of a Park
that changed almost daily. The newcomer/old-timers were on-side with the
rest of the Park, had their support, and looked like they might make a
successful go of it.

So it fell to Lil to make sure that there were no bugs in the meager
attractions of Liberty Square: the Hall of the Presidents, the Liberty
Belle riverboat, and the glorious Haunted Mansion, arguably the coolest
attraction to come from the fevered minds of the old-time Disney
Imagineers.

I caught her backstage at the Hall of the Presidents, tinkering with
Lincoln II, the backup animatronic. Lil tried to keep two of everything
running at speed, just in case. She could swap out a dead bot for a
backup in five minutes flat, which is all that crowd-control would
permit.

It had been two weeks since Dan's arrival, and though I'd barely seen
him in that time, his presence was vivid in our lives. Our little ranch-
house had a new smell, not unpleasant, of rejuve and hope and loss,
something barely noticeable over the tropical flowers nodding in front
of our porch. My phone rang three or four times a day, Dan checking in
from his rounds of the Park, seeking out some way to accumulate personal
capital. His excitement and dedication to the task were inspiring,
pulling me into his over-the-top-and-damn-the-torpedoes mode of being.

"You just missed Dan," she said. She had her head in Lincoln's chest,
working with an autosolder and a magnifier. Bent over, red hair tied
back in a neat bun, sweat sheening her wiry freckled arms, smelling of
girl-sweat and machine lubricant, she made me wish there were a mattress
somewhere backstage. I settled for patting her behind affectionately,
and she wriggled appreciatively. "He's looking better."

His rejuve had taken him back to apparent 25, the way I remembered him.
He was rawboned and leathery, but still had the defeated stoop that had
startled me when I saw him at the Adventurer's Club. "What did he want?"

"He's been hanging out with Debra -- he wanted to make sure I knew what
she's up to."

Debra was one of the old guard, a former comrade of Lil's parents. She'd
spent a decade in Disneyland Beijing, coding sim-rides. If she had her
way, we'd tear down every marvelous rube goldberg in the Park and
replace them with pristine white sim boxes on giant, articulated servos.

The problem was that she was _really good_ at coding sims. Her Great
Movie Ride rehab at MGM was breathtaking -- the Star Wars sequence had
already inspired a hundred fan-sites that fielded millions of hits.

She'd leveraged her success into a deal with the Adventureland ad-hocs
to rehab the Pirates of the Caribbean, and their backstage areas were
piled high with reference: treasure chests and cutlasses and bowsprits.
It was terrifying to walk through; the Pirates was the last ride Walt
personally supervised, and we'd thought it was sacrosanct. But Debra had
built a Pirates sim in Beijing, based on Chend I Sao, the XIXth century
Chinese pirate queen, which was credited with rescuing the Park from
obscurity and ruin. The Florida iteration would incorporate the best
aspects of its Chinese cousin -- the AI-driven sims that communicated
with each other and with the guests, greeting them by name each time
they rode and spinning age-appropriate tales of piracy on the high seas;
the spectacular fly-through of the aquatic necropolis of rotting junks
on the sea-floor; the thrilling pitch and yaw of the sim as it weathered
a violent, breath-taking storm -- but with Western themes: wafts of
Jamaican pepper sauce crackling through the air; liquid Afro-Caribbean
accents; and swordfights conducted in the manner of the pirates who
plied the blue waters of the New World. Identical sims would stack like
cordwood in the space currently occupied by the bulky ride-apparatus and
dioramas, quintupling capacity and halving load-time.

"So, what's she up to?"

Lil extracted herself from the Rail-Splitter's mechanical guts and made
a comical moue of worry. "She's rehabbing the Pirates -- and doing an
incredible job. They're ahead of schedule, they've got good net-buzz,
the focus groups are cumming themselves." The comedy went out of her
expression, baring genuine worry.

She turned away and closed up Honest Abe, then fired her finger at him.
Smoothly, he began to run through his spiel, silent but for the soft hum
and whine of his servos. Lil mimed twiddling a knob and his audiotrack
kicked in low: "All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa _combined_
could not, by force, make a track on the Blue Ridge, nor take a drink
from the Ohio. If destruction be our lot, then we ourselves must be its
author -- and its finisher." She mimed turning down the gain and he fell
silent again.

"You said it, Mr. President," she said, and fired her finger at him
again, powering him down. She bent and adjusted his hand-sewn period
topcoat, then carefully wound and set the turnip-watch in his vest-
pocket.

I put my arm around her shoulders. "You're doing all you can -- and it's
good work," I said. I'd fallen into the easy castmember mode of
speaking, voicing bland affirmations. Hearing the words, I felt a flush
of embarrassment. I pulled her into a long, hard hug and fumbled for
better reassurance. Finding no words that would do, I gave her a final
squeeze and let her go.

She looked at me sidelong and nodded her head. "It'll be fine, of
course," she said. "I mean, the worst possible scenario is that Debra
will do her job very, very well, and make things even better than they
are now. That's not so bad."

This was a 180-degree reversal of her position on the subject the last
time we'd talked, but you don't live more than a century without
learning when to point out that sort of thing and when not to.

My cochlea struck twelve noon and a HUD appeared with my weekly backup
reminder. Lil was maneuvering Ben Franklin II out of his niche. I waved
good-bye at her back and walked away, to an uplink terminal. Once I was
close enough for secure broadband communications, I got ready to back
up. My cochlea chimed again and I answered it.

"Yes," I subvocalized, impatiently. I hated getting distracted from a
backup -- one of my enduring fears was that I'd forget the backup
altogether and leave myself vulnerable for an entire week until the next
reminder. I'd lost the knack of getting into habits in my adolescence,
giving in completely to machine-generated reminders over conscious
choice.

"It's Dan." I heard the sound of the Park in full swing behind him --
children's laughter; bright, recorded animatronic spiels; the tromp of
thousands of feet. "Can you meet me at the Tiki Room? It's pretty
important."

"Can it wait for fifteen?" I asked.

"Sure -- see you in fifteen."

I rung off and initiated the backup. A status-bar zipped across a HUD,
dumping the parts of my memory that were purely digital; then it
finished and started in on organic memory. My eyes rolled back in my
head and my life flashed before my eyes.

========= CHAPTER 3 =========

The Bitchun Society has had much experience with restores from backup --
in the era of the cure for death, people live pretty recklessly. Some
people get refreshed a couple dozen times a year.

Not me. I hate the process. Not so much that I won't participate in it.
Everyone who had serious philosophical conundra on that subject just,
you know, _died_, a generation before. The Bitchun Society didn't need
to convert its detractors, just outlive them.

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