Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

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"Is there a problem, Julius? If there is, I'd rather we just talked
about it, instead of making chitchat."

I smiled and took her hand off my shoulder. "How old are you, Kim?"

"Nineteen," she said. "What's the problem?"

Nineteen! Jesus, no wonder she was so volatile. _What's my excuse,
then?_

"It's not a problem, Kim, it's just something I wanted to discuss with
you. The people you-all have been bringing down to work for me, they're
all really great castmembers."

"But?"

"But we have limited resources around here. Not enough hours in the day
for me to stay on top of the new folks, the rehab, everything. Not to
mention that until we open the new Mansion, there's a limited number of
extras we can use out front. I'm concerned that we're going to put
someone on stage without proper training, or that we're going to run out
of uniforms; I'm also concerned about people coming all the way here and
discovering that there aren't any shifts for them to take."

She gave me a relieved look. "Is _that_ all? Don't worry about it. I've
been talking to Debra, over at the Hall of Presidents, and she says she
can pick up any people who can't be used at the Mansion -- we could even
rotate back and forth!" She was clearly proud of her foresight.

My ears buzzed. Debra, one step ahead of me all along the way. She
probably suggested that Kim do some extra recruiting in the first place.
She'd take in the people who came down to work the Mansion, convince
them they'd been hard done by the Liberty Square crew, and rope them
into her little Whuffie ranch, the better to seize the Mansion, the
Park, the whole of Walt Disney World.

"Oh, I don't think it'll come to that," I said, carefully. "I'm sure we
can find a use for them all at the Mansion. More the merrier."

Kim cocked quizzical, but let it go. I bit my tongue. The pain brought
me back to reality, and I started planning costume production, training
rosters, bunking. God, if only Suneep would finish the robots!

#

"What do you mean, 'no'?" I said, hotly.

Lil folded her arms and glared. "No, Julius. It won't fly. The group is
already upset that all the glory is going to the new people, they'll
never let us bring more in. They also won't stop working on the rehab to
train them, costume them, feed them and mother them. They're losing
Whuffie every day that the Mansion's shut up, and they don't want any
more delays. Dave's already joined up with Debra, and I'm sure he's not
the last one."

Dave -- the jerk who'd pissed all over the rehab in the meeting. Of
course he'd gone over. Lil and Dan stood side by side on the porch of
the house where I'd lived. I'd driven out that night to convince Lil to
sell the ad-hocs on bringing in more recruits, but it wasn't going
according to plan. They wouldn't even let me in the house.

"So what do I tell Kim?"

"Tell her whatever you want," Lil said. "You brought her in -- you
manage her. Take some goddamn responsibility for once in your life."

It wasn't going to get any better. Dan gave me an apologetic look. Lil
glared a moment longer, then went into the house.

"Debra's doing real well," he said. "The net's all over her. Biggest
thing ever. Flash-baking is taking off in nightclubs, dance mixes with
the DJ's backup being shoved in bursts into the dancers."

"God," I said. "I fucked up, Dan. I fucked it all up."

He didn't say anything, and that was the same as agreeing.

Driving back to the hotel, I decided I needed to talk to Kim. She was a
problem I didn't need, and maybe a problem I could solve. I pulled a
screeching U-turn and drove the little runabout to her place, a tiny
condo in a crumbling complex that had once been a gated seniors'
village, pre-Bitchun.

Her place was easy to spot. All the lights were burning, faint
conversation audible through the screen door. I jogged up the steps two
at a time, and was about to knock when a familiar voice drifted through
the screen.

Debra, saying: "Oh yes, oh yes! Terrific idea! I'd never really thought
about using streetmosphere players to liven up the queue area, but
you're making a lot of sense. You people have just been doing the _best_
work over at the Mansion -- find me more like you and I'll take them for
the Hall any day!"

I heard Kim and her young friends chatting excitedly, proudly. The anger
and fear suffused me from tip to toe, and I felt suddenly light and cool
and ready to do something terrible.

I padded silently down the steps and got into my runabout.

#

Some people never learn. I'm one of them, apparently.

I almost chortled over the foolproof simplicity of my plan as I slipped
in through the cast entrance using the ID card I'd scored when my
systems went offline and I was no longer able to squirt my authorization
at the door.

I changed clothes in a bathroom on Main Street, switching into a black
cowl that completely obscured my features, then slunk through the
shadows along the storefronts until I came to the moat around
Cinderella's castle. Keeping low, I stepped over the fence and duck-
walked down the embankment, then slipped into the water and sloshed
across to the Adventureland side.

Slipping along to the Liberty Square gateway, I flattened myself in
doorways whenever I heard maintenance crews passing in the distance,
until I reached the Hall of Presidents, and in a twinkling I was inside
the theater itself.

Humming the Small World theme, I produced a short wrecking bar from my
cowl's tabbed pocket and set to work.

The primary broadcast units were hidden behind a painted scrim over the
stage, and they were surprisingly well built for a first generation
tech. I really worked up a sweat smashing them, but I kept at it until
not a single component remained recognizable. The work was slow and loud
in the silent Park, but it lulled me into a sleepy reverie, an
autohypnotic swing-bang-swing-bang timeless time. To be on the safe
side, I grabbed the storage units and slipped them into the cowl.

Locating their backup units was a little trickier, but years of hanging
out at the Hall of Presidents while Lil tinkered with the animatronics
helped me. I methodically investigated every nook, cranny and storage
area until I located them, in what had been a break-room closet. By now,
I had the rhythm of the thing, and I made short work of them.

I did one more pass, wrecking anything that looked like it might be a
prototype for the next generation or notes that would help them
reconstruct the units I'd smashed.

I had no illusions about Debra's preparedness -- she'd have something
offsite that she could get up and running in a few days. I wasn't doing
anything permanent, I was just buying myself a day or two.

I made my way clean out of the Park without being spotted, and sloshed
my way into my runabout, shoes leaking water from the moat.

For the first time in weeks, I slept like a baby.

#

Of course, I got caught. I don't really have the temperament for
Machiavellian shenanigans, and I left a trail a mile wide, from the
muddy footprints in the Contemporary's lobby to the wrecking bar
thoughtlessly left behind, with my cowl and the storage units from the
Hall, forgotten on the back seat of my runabout.

I whistled my personal jazzy uptempo version of "Grim Grinning Ghosts"
as I made my way from Costuming, through the utilidor, out to Liberty
Square, half an hour before the Park opened.

Standing in front of me were Lil and Debra. Debra was holding my cowl
and wrecking bar. Lil held the storage units.

I hadn't put on my transdermals that morning, and so the emotion I felt
was unmuffled, loud and yammering.

I ran.

I ran past them, along the road to Adventureland, past the Tiki Room
where I'd been killed, past the Adventureland gate where I'd waded
through the moat, down Main Street. I ran and ran, elbowing early
guests, trampling flowers, knocking over an apple cart across from the
Penny Arcade.

I ran until I reached the main gate, and turned, thinking I'd outrun Lil
and Debra and all my problems. I'd thought wrong. They were both there,
a step behind me, puffing and red. Debra held my wrecking bar like a
weapon, and she brandished it at me.

"You're a goddamn idiot, you know that?" she said. I think if we'd been
alone, she would've swung it at me.

"Can't take it when someone else plays rough, huh, Debra?" I sneered.

Lil shook her head disgustedly. "She's right, you are an idiot. The
ad-hoc's meeting in Adventureland. You're coming."

"Why?" I asked, feeling belligerent. "You going to honor me for all my
hard work?"

"We're going to talk about the future, Julius, what's left of it for
us."

"For God's sake, Lil, can't you see what's going on? They _killed_ me!
They did it, and now we're fighting each other instead of her! Why can't
you see how _wrong_ that is?"

"You'd better watch those accusations, Julius," Debra said, quietly and
intensely, almost hissing. "I don't know who killed you or why, but
you're the one who's guilty here. You need help."

I barked a humorless laugh. Guests were starting to stream into the
now-open Park, and several of them were watching intently as the three
costumed castmembers shouted at each other. I could feel my Whuffie
hemorrhaging. "Debra, you are purely full of shit, and your work is
trite and unimaginative. You're a fucking despoiler and you don't even
have the guts to admit it."

"That's _enough_, Julius," Lil said, her face hard, her rage barely in
check. "We're going."

Debra walked a pace behind me, Lil a pace before, all the way through
the crowd to Adventureland. I saw a dozen opportunities to slip into a
gap in the human ebb and flow and escape custody, but I didn't try. I
wanted a chance to tell the whole world what I'd done and why I'd done
it.

Debra followed us in when we mounted the steps to the meeting room. Lil
turned. "I don't think you should be here, Debra," she said in measured
tones.

Debra shook her head. "You can't keep me out, you know. And you
shouldn't want to. We're on the same side."

I snorted derisively, and I think it decided Lil. "Come on, then," she
said.

It was SRO in the meeting room, packed to the gills with the entire
ad-hoc, except for my new recruits. No work was being done on the rehab,
then, and the Liberty Belle would be sitting at her dock. Even the
restaurant crews were there. Liberty Square must've been a ghost town.
It gave the meeting a sense of urgency: the knowledge that there were
guests in Liberty Square wandering aimlessly, looking for castmembers to
help them out. Of course, Debra's crew might've been around.

The crowd's faces were hard and bitter, leaving no doubt in my mind that
I was in deep shit. Even Dan, sitting in the front row, looked angry. I
nearly started crying right then. Dan -- oh, Dan. My pal, my confidant,
my patsy, my rival, my nemesis. Dan, Dan, Dan. I wanted to beat him to
death and hug him at the same time.

Lil took the podium and tucked stray hairs behind her ears. "All right,
then," she said. I stood to her left and Debra stood to her right.

"Thanks for coming out today. I'd like to get this done quickly. We all
have important work to get to. I'll run down the facts: last night, a
member of this ad-hoc vandalized the Hall of Presidents, rendering it
useless. It's estimated that it will take at least a week to get it back
up and running.

"I don't have to tell you that this isn't acceptable. This has never
happened before, and it will never happen again. We're going to see to
that.

"I'd like to propose that no further work be done on the Mansion until
the Hall of Presidents is fully operational. I will be volunteering my
services on the repairs."

There were nods in the audience. Lil wouldn't be the only one working at
the Hall that week. "Disney World isn't a competition," Lil said. "All
the different ad-hocs work together, and we do it to make the Park as
good as we can. We lose sight of that at our peril."

I nearly gagged on bile. "I'd like to say something," I said, as calmly
as I could manage.

Lil shot me a look. "That's fine, Julius. Any member of the ad-hoc can
speak."

I took a deep breath. "I did it, all right?" I said. My voice cracked.
"I did it, and I don't have any excuse for having done it. It may not
have been the smartest thing I've ever done, but I think you all should
understand how I was driven to it.

"We're not _supposed_ to be in competition with one another here, but we
all know that that's just a polite fiction. The truth is that there's
real competition in the Park, and that the hardest players are the crew
that rehabbed the Hall of Presidents. They _stole_ the Hall from you!
They did it while you were distracted, they used _me_ to engineer the
distraction, they _murdered_ me!" I heard the shriek creeping into my
voice, but I couldn't do anything about it.

"Usually, the lie that we're all on the same side is fine. It lets us
work together in peace. But that changed the day they had me shot. If
you keep on believing it, you're going to lose the Mansion, the Liberty
Belle, Tom Sawyer Island -- all of it. All the history we have with this
place -- all the history that the billions who've visited it have --
it's going to be destroyed and replaced with the sterile, thoughtless
shit that's taken over the Hall. Once that happens, there's nothing left
that makes this place special. Anyone can get the same experience
sitting at home on the sofa! What happens then, huh? How much longer do
you think this place will stay open once the only people here are
_you?_"

Debra smiled condescendingly. "Are you finished, then?" she asked,
sweetly. "Fine. I know I'm not a member of this group, but since it was
my work that was destroyed last night, I think I would like to address
Julius's statements, if you don't mind." She paused, but no one spoke
up.

"First of all, I want you all to know that we don't hold you responsible
for what happened last night. We know who was responsible, and he needs
help. I urge you to see to it that he gets it.

"Next, I'd like to say that as far as I'm concerned, we are on the same
side -- the side of the Park. This is a special place, and it couldn't
exist without all of our contributions. What happened to Julius was
terrible, and I sincerely hope that the person responsible is caught and
brought to justice. But that person wasn't me or any of the people in my
ad-hoc.

"Lil, I'd like to thank you for your generous offer of assistance, and
we'll take you up on it. That goes for all of you -- come on by the
Hall, we'll put you to work. We'll be up and running in no time.

"Now, as far as the Mansion goes, let me say this once and for all:
neither me nor my ad-hoc have any desire to take over the operations of
the Mansion. It is a terrific attraction, and it's getting better with
the work you're all doing. If you've been worrying about it, then you
can stop worrying now. We're all on the same side.

"Thanks for hearing me out. I've got to go see my team now."

She turned and left, a chorus of applause following her out.

Lil waited until it died down, then said, "All right, then, we've got
work to do, too. I'd like to ask you all a favor, first. I'd like us to
keep the details of last night's incident to ourselves. Letting the
guests and the world know about this ugly business isn't good for
anyone. Can we all agree to do that?"

There was a moment's pause while the results were tabulated on the HUDs,
then Lil gave them a million-dollar smile. "I knew you'd come through.
Thanks, guys. Let's get to work."

#

I spent the day at the hotel, listlessly scrolling around on my
terminal. Lil had made it very clear to me after the meeting that I
wasn't to show my face inside the Park until I'd "gotten help," whatever
that meant.

By noon, the news was out. It was hard to pin down the exact source, but
it seemed to revolve around the new recruits. One of them had told their
net-pals about the high drama in Liberty Square, and mentioned my name.

There were already a couple of sites vilifying me, and I expected more.
I needed some kind of help, that was for sure.

I thought about leaving then, turning my back on the whole business and
leaving Walt Disney World to start yet another new life, Whuffie-poor
and fancy-free.

It wouldn't be so bad. I'd been in poor repute before, not so long ago.
That first time Dan and I had palled around, back at the U of T, I'd
been the center of a lot of pretty ambivalent sentiment, and Whuffie-
poor as a man can be.

I slept in a little coffin on-campus, perfectly climate controlled. It
was cramped and dull, but my access to the network was free and I had
plenty of material to entertain myself. While I couldn't get a table in
a restaurant, I was free to queue up at any of the makers around town
and get myself whatever I wanted to eat and drink, whenever I wanted it.
Compared to 99.99999 percent of all the people who'd ever lived, I had a
life of unparalleled luxury.

Even by the standards of the Bitchun Society, I was hardly a rarity. The
number of low-esteem individuals at large was significant, and they got
along just fine, hanging out in parks, arguing, reading, staging plays,
playing music.

Of course, that wasn't the life for me. I had Dan to pal around with, a
rare high-net-Whuffie individual who was willing to fraternize with a
shmuck like me. He'd stand me to meals at sidewalk cafes and concerts at
the SkyDome, and shoot down any snotty reputation-punk who sneered at my
Whuffie tally. Being with Dan was a process of constantly reevaluating
my beliefs in the Bitchun Society, and I'd never had a more vibrant,
thought-provoking time in all my life.

I could have left the Park, deadheaded to anywhere in the world, started
over. I could have turned my back on Dan, on Debra, on Lil and the whole
mess.

I didn't.

I called up the doc.

========= CHAPTER 8 =========

Doctor Pete answered on the third ring, audio-only. In the background, I
heard a chorus of crying children, the constant backdrop of the Magic
Kingdom infirmary.

"Hi, doc," I said.

"Hello, Julius. What can I do for you?" Under the veneer of professional
medical and castmember friendliness, I sensed irritation.

_Make it all good again_. "I'm not really sure. I wanted to see if I
could talk it over with you. I'm having some pretty big problems."

"I'm on-shift until five. Can it wait until then?"

By then, I had no idea if I'd have the nerve to see him. "I don't think
so -- I was hoping we could meet right away."

"If it's an emergency, I can have an ambulance sent for you."

"It's urgent, but not an emergency. I need to talk about it in person.
Please?"

He sighed in undoctorly, uncastmemberly fashion. "Julius, I've got
important things to do here. Are you sure this can't wait?"

I bit back a sob. "I'm sure, doc."

"All right then. When can you be here?"

Lil had made it clear that she didn't want me in the Park. "Can you meet
me? I can't really come to you. I'm at the Contemporary, Tower B, room
2334."

"I don't really make house calls, son."

"I know, I know." I hated how pathetic I sounded. "Can you make an
exception? I don't know who else to turn to."

"I'll be there as soon as I can. I'll have to get someone to cover for
me. Let's not make a habit of this, all right?"

I whooshed out my relief. "I promise."

He disconnected abruptly, and I found myself dialing Dan.

"Yes?" he said, cautiously.

"Doctor Pete is coming over, Dan. I don't know if he can help me -- I
don't know if anyone can. I just wanted you to know."

He surprised me, then, and made me remember why he was still my friend,
even after everything. "Do you want me to come over?"

"That would be very nice," I said, quietly. "I'm at the hotel."

"Give me ten minutes," he said, and rang off.

#

He found me on my patio, looking out at the Castle and the peaks of
Space Mountain. To my left spread the sparkling waters of the Seven Seas
Lagoon, to my right, the Property stretched away for mile after
manicured mile. The sun was warm on my skin, faint strains of happy
laughter drifted with the wind, and the flowers were in bloom. In
Toronto, it would be freezing rain, gray buildings, noisome rapid
transit (a monorail hissed by), and hard-faced anonymity. I missed it.

Dan pulled up a chair next to mine and sat without a word. We both
stared out at the view for a long while.

"It's something else, isn't it?" I said, finally.

"I suppose so," he said. "I want to say something before the doc comes
by, Julius."

"Go ahead."

"Lil and I are through. It should never have happened in the first
place, and I'm not proud of myself. If you two were breaking up, that's
none of my business, but I had no right to hurry it along."

"All right," I said. I was too drained for emotion.

"I've taken a room here, moved my things."

"How's Lil taking it?"

"Oh, she thinks I'm a total bastard. I suppose she's right."

"I suppose she's partly right," I corrected him.

He gave me a gentle slug in the shoulder. "Thanks."

We waited in companionable silence until the doc arrived.

He bustled in, his smile lines drawn up into a sour purse and waited
expectantly. I left Dan on the patio while I took a seat on the bed.

"I'm cracking up or something," I said. "I've been acting erratically,
sometimes violently. I don't know what's wrong with me." I'd rehearsed
the speech, but it still wasn't easy to choke out.

"We both know what's wrong, Julius," the doc said, impatiently. "You
need to be refreshed from your backup, get set up with a fresh clone and
retire this one. We've had this talk."

"I can't do it," I said, not meeting his eye. "I just can't -- isn't
there another way?"

The doc shook his head. "Julius, I've got limited resources to allocate.
There's a perfectly good cure for what's ailing you, and if you won't
take it, there's not much I can do for you."

"But what about meds?"

"Your problem isn't a chemical imbalance, it's a mental defect. Your
_brain_ is _broken_, son. All that meds will do is mask the symptoms,
while you get worse. I can't tell you what you want to hear,
unfortunately. Now, If you're ready to take the cure, I can retire this
clone immediately and get you restored into a new one in 48 hours."

"Isn't there another way? Please? You have to help me -- I can't lose
all this." I couldn't admit my real reasons for being so attached to
this singularly miserable chapter in my life, not even to myself.

The doctor rose to go. "Look, Julius, you haven't got the Whuffie to
make it worth anyone's time to research a solution to this problem,
other than the one that we all know about. I can give you mood-
suppressants, but that's not a permanent solution."

"Why not?"

He boggled. "You _can't_ just take dope for the rest of your life, son.
Eventually, something will happen to this body -- I see from your file
that you're stroke-prone -- and you're going to get refreshed from your
backup. The longer you wait, the more traumatic it'll be. You're robbing
from your future self for your selfish present."

It wasn't the first time the thought had crossed my mind. Every passing
day made it harder to take the cure. To lie down and wake up friends
with Dan, to wake up and be in love with Lil again. To wake up to a
Mansion the way I remembered it, a Hall of Presidents where I could find
Lil bent over with her head in a President's guts of an afternoon. To
lie down and wake without disgrace, without knowing that my lover and my
best friend would betray me, _had_ betrayed me.

I just couldn't do it -- not yet, anyway.

Dan -- Dan was going to kill himself soon, and if I restored myself from
my old backup, I'd lose my last year with him. I'd lose _his_ last year.

"Let's table that, doc. I hear what you're saying, but there're
complications. I guess I'll take the mood-suppressants for now."

He gave me a cold look. "I'll give you a scrip, then. I could've done
that without coming out here. Please don't call me anymore."

I was shocked by his obvious ire, but I didn't understand it until he
was gone and I told Dan what had happened.

"Us old-timers, we're used to thinking of doctors as highly trained
professionals -- all that pre-Bitchun med-school stuff, long
internships, anatomy drills... Truth is, the average doc today gets more
training in bedside manner than bioscience. 'Doctor' Pete is a
technician, not an MD, not the way you and I mean it. Anyone with the
kind of knowledge you're looking for is working as a historical
researcher, not a doctor.

"But that's not the illusion. The doc is supposed to be the authority on
medical matters, even though he's only got one trick: restore from
backup. You're reminding Pete of that, and he's not happy to have it
happen."

#

I waited a week before returning to the Magic Kingdom, sunning myself on
the white sand beach at the Contemporary, jogging the Walk Around the
World, taking a canoe out to the wild and overgrown Discovery Island,
and generally cooling out. Dan came by in the evenings and it was like
old times, running down the pros and cons of Whuffie and Bitchunry and
life in general, sitting on my porch with a sweating pitcher of
lemonade.

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