http://www. Craphound. Com/down

Tor Books, January 2003

ISBN: 0765304368

--

======= Blurbs: =======

He sparkles! He fizzes! He does backflips and breaks the furniture!Science fiction needs Cory Doctorow!

Bruce Sterling Author, The Hacker Crackdown and Distraction

#

In the true spirit of Walt Disney, Doctorow has ripped a part of ourcommon culture, mixed it with a brilliant story, and burned into ourculture a new set of memes that will be with us for a generation atleast. 

Lawrence Lessig Author, The Future of Ideas

#

Cory Doctorow doesn't just write about the future - I think he livesthere. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom isn't just a really good read, it's also, like the best kind of fiction, a kind of guide book. See theTomorrowland of Tomorrow today, and while you're there, why not drop byFrontierland, and the Haunted Mansion as well? (It's the Mansion that'sthe haunted heart of this book. ) Cory makes me feel nostalgic for thefuture - a dizzying, yet rather pleasant sensation, as if I'm spiralingdown the tracks of Space Mountain over and over again. Visit the MagicKingdom and live forever!

Kelly Link Author, Stranger Things Happen

#

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is the most entertaining and excitingscience fiction story I've read in the last few years. I love page-turners, especially when they are as unusual as this novel. I predictbig things for Down and Out -- it could easily become a breakout genre-buster. 

Mark Frauenfelder Contributing Editor, Wired Magazine

#

Imagine you woke up one day and Walt Disney had taken over the world. Not only that, but money's been abolished and somebody's developed theCure for Death. Welcome to the Bitchun Society--and make sure you'restrapped in tight, because it's going to be a wild ride. In a worldwhere everyone's wishes can come true, one man returns to the original, crumbling city of dreams--Disney World. Here in the spiritual centerof the Bitchun Society he struggles to find and preserve the original, human face of the Magic Kingdom against the young, post-human andincreasingly alien inheritors of the Earth. Now that any experience canbe simulated, human relationships become ever more fragile; and toJulius, the corny, mechanical ghosts of the Haunted Mansion have come toseem like a precious link to a past when we could tell the real from thesimulated, the true from the false. 

Cory Doctorow--cultural critic, Disneyphile, and ultimate Early Adopter--uses language with the reckless confidence of the Beat poets. Yetbehind the dazzling prose and vibrant characters lie ideas we should allpay heed to. The future rushes on like a plummeting roller coaster, andit's hard to see where we're going. But at least with this bookDoctorow has given us a map of the park. 

Karl Schroeder Author, Permanence

#

Cory Doctorow is the most interesting new SF writer I've come across inyears. Ê He starts out at the point where older SF writers' speculationsend. Ê It's a distinct pleasure to give him some Whuffie. 

Rudy Rucker Author, Spaceland

#

Cory Doctorow rocks! I check his blog about ten times a day, becausehe's always one of the first to notice a major incursion from thesocial-technological-pop-cultural future, and his voice is a compellingvehicle for news from the future. Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom isabout a world that is visible in its outlines today, if you know whereto look, from reputation systems to peer-to-peer adhocracies. Doctorowknows where to look, and how to word-paint the rest of us into thepicture. 

Howard Rheingold Author, Smart Mobs

#

Doctorow is more than just a sick mind looking to twist the perceptionsof those whose realities remain uncorrupted - though that should beenough recommendation to read his work. *Down and Out in the MagicKingdom* is black comedic, sci-fi prophecy on the dangers ofsurrendering our consensual hallucination to the regime. Fun to read, but difficult to sleep afterwards. 

Douglas Rushkoff Author of Cyberia and Media Virus!

#

"Wow! Disney imagineering meets nanotechnology, the reputation economy, and Ray Kurzweil's transhuman future. As much fun as Neal Stephenson'sSnow Crash, and as packed with mind bending ideas about social changescascading from the frontiers of science. "

Tim O'Reilly Publisher and Founder, O'Reilly and Associates

#

Doctorow has created a rich and exciting vision of the future, and thenwrote a page-turner of a story in it. I couldn't put the book down. 

Bruce Schneier Author, Secrets and Lies

#

Cory Doctorow is one of our best new writers: smart, daring, savvy, entertaining, ambitious, plugged-in, and as good a guide to the wiredworld of the twenty-first century that stretches out before us as you'regoing to find. 

Gardner Dozois Editor, Asimov's SF

#

Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" tells a gripping, fast-paced story that hinges on thought-provoking extrapolation fromtoday's technical realities. This is the sort of book that captures anddefines the spirit of a turning point in human history when our toolsremake ourselves and our world. 

Mitch Kapor Founder, Lotus, Inc. , co-founder Electronic FrontierFoundation

--

======================= A note about this book: =======================

"Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" is my first novel. It's an actual, no-foolin' words-on-paper book, published by the good people at TorBooks in New York City. You can buy this book in stores or online, byfollowing links like this one:

http://www. Craphound. Com/down/buy. Php

So, what's with this file? Good question. 

I'm releasing the entire text of this book as a free, freelyredistributable e-book. You can download it, put it on a P2P net, put iton your site, email it to a friend, and, if you're addicted to deadtrees, you can even print it. 

Why am I doing this thing? Well, it's a long story, but to shorten itup: first-time novelists have a tough row to hoe. Our publishers don'thave a lot of promotional budget to throw at unknown factors like us. Mostly, we rise and fall based on word-of-mouth. I'm not bad at word-of-mouth. I have a blog, Boing Boing (http://boingboing. Net), where I do a*lot* of word-of-mouthing. I compulsively tell friends and strangersabout things that I like. 

And telling people about stuff I like is *way*, *way* easier if I canjust send it to 'em. Way easier. 

What's more, P2P nets kick all kinds of ass. Most of the books, musicand movies ever released are not available for sale, anywhere in theworld. In the brief time that P2P nets have flourished, the ad-hocmasses of the Internet have managed to put just about *everything*online. What's more, they've done it for cheaper than any otherarchiving/revival effort ever. I'm a stone infovore and this kindaInternet mishegas gives me a serious frisson of futurosity. 

Yeah, there are legal problems. Yeah, it's hard to figure out how peopleare gonna make money doing it. Yeah, there is a lot of social upheavaland a serious threat to innovation, freedom, business, and whatnot. It'syour basic end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario, and as a sciencefiction writer, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenaria are my stock-in-trade. 

I'm especially grateful to my publisher, Tor Books (http://www. Tor. Com)and my editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden(http://nielsenhayden. Com/electrolite) for being hep enough to let metry out this experiment. 

All that said, here's the deal: I'm releasing this book under a licensedeveloped by the Creative Commons project (http://creativecommons. Org/). This is a project that lets people like me roll our own licenseagreements for the distribution of our creative work under terms similarto those employed by the Free/Open Source Software movement. It's agreat project, and I'm proud to be a part of it. 

Here's a summary of the license:

http://creativecommons. Org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1. 0

Attribution. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work. In return, licensees must give the original authorcredit. 

No Derivative Works. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute, display and perform only unaltered copies of the work -- not derivativeworks based on it. 

Noncommercial. The licensor permits others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work. In return, licensees may not use the work forcommercial purposes -- unless they get the licensor's permission. 

And here's the license itself:

http://creativecommons. Org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1. 0-legalcode

THE WORK (AS DEFINED BELOW) IS PROVIDED UNDER THE TERMS OF THIS CREATIVECOMMONS PUBLIC LICENSE ("CCPL" OR "LICENSE"). THE WORK IS PROTECTED BYCOPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW. ANY USE OF THE WORK OTHER THAN ASAUTHORIZED UNDER THIS LICENSE IS PROHIBITED. 

BY EXERCISING ANY RIGHTS TO THE WORK PROVIDED HERE, YOU ACCEPT AND AGREETO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE. THE LICENSOR GRANTS YOU THERIGHTS CONTAINED HERE IN CONSIDERATION OF YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF SUCH TERMSAND CONDITIONS. 

1. Definitions

a. "Collective Work" means a work, such as a periodical issue, anthologyor encyclopedia, in which the Work in its entirety in unmodified form, along with a number of other contributions, constituting separate andindependent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole. A work that constitutes a Collective Work will not be considered aDerivative Work (as defined below) for the purposes of this License. 

b. "Derivative Work" means a work based upon the Work or upon the Workand other pre-existing works, such as a translation, musicalarrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or anyother form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted, except that a work that constitutes a Collective Work will not beconsidered a Derivative Work for the purpose of this License. 

c. "Licensor" means the individual or entity that offers the Work underthe terms of this License. 

d. "Original Author" means the individual or entity who created theWork. 

e. "Work" means the copyrightable work of authorship offered under theterms of this License. 

f. "You" means an individual or entity exercising rights under thisLicense who has not previously violated the terms of this License withrespect to the Work, or who has received express permission from theLicensor to exercise rights under this License despite a previousviolation. 

2. Fair Use Rights. Nothing in this license is intended to reduce, limit, or restrict any rights arising from fair use, first sale or otherlimitations on the exclusive rights of the copyright owner undercopyright law or other applicable laws. 

3. License Grant. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright) license toexercise the rights in the Work as stated below:

a. To reproduce the Work, to incorporate the Work into one or moreCollective Works, and to reproduce the Work as incorporated in theCollective Works;

b. To distribute copies or phonorecords of, display publicly, performpublicly, and perform publicly by means of a digital audio transmissionthe Work including as incorporated in Collective Works;

The above rights may be exercised in all media and formats whether nowknown or hereafter devised. The above rights include the right to makesuch modifications as are technically necessary to exercise the rightsin other media and formats. All rights not expressly granted by Licensorare hereby reserved. 

4. Restrictions. The license granted in Section 3 above is expresslymade subject to and limited by the following restrictions:

a. You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publiclydigitally perform the Work only under the terms of this License, and Youmust include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier for, thisLicense with every copy or phonorecord of the Work You distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform. Youmay not offer or impose any terms on the Work that alter or restrict theterms of this License or the recipients' exercise of the rights grantedhereunder. You may not sublicense the Work. You must keep intact allnotices that refer to this License and to the disclaimer of warranties. You may not distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publiclydigitally perform the Work with any technological measures that controlaccess or use of the Work in a manner inconsistent with the terms ofthis License Agreement. The above applies to the Work as incorporated ina Collective Work, but this does not require the Collective Work apartfrom the Work itself to be made subject to the terms of this License. IfYou create a Collective Work, upon notice from any Licensor You must, tothe extent practicable, remove from the Collective Work any reference tosuch Licensor or the Original Author, as requested. 

b. You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed towardcommercial advantage or private monetary compensation. The exchange ofthe Work for other copyrighted works by means of digital file-sharing orotherwise shall not be considered to be intended for or directed towardcommercial advantage or private monetary compensation, provided there isno payment of any monetary compensation in connection with the exchangeof copyrighted works. 

c. If you distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publiclydigitally perform the Work or any Collective Works, You must keep intactall copyright notices for the Work and give the Original Author creditreasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing by conveying thename (or pseudonym if applicable) of the Original Author if supplied;the title of the Work if supplied. Such credit may be implemented in anyreasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a CollectiveWork, at a minimum such credit will appear where any other comparableauthorship credit appears and in a manner at least as prominent as suchother comparable authorship credit. 

5. Representations, Warranties and Disclaimer

a. By offering the Work for public release under this License, Licensorrepresents and warrants that, to the best of Licensor's knowledge afterreasonable inquiry:

i. Licensor has secured all rights in the Work necessary to grant thelicense rights hereunder and to permit the lawful exercise of the rightsgranted hereunder without You having any obligation to pay anyroyalties, compulsory license fees, residuals or any other payments;

ii. The Work does not infringe the copyright, trademark, publicityrights, common law rights or any other right of any third party orconstitute defamation, invasion of privacy or other tortious injury toany third party. 

b. EXCEPT AS EXPRESSLY STATED IN THIS LICENSE OR OTHERWISE AGREED INWRITING OR REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE WORK IS LICENSED ON AN "ASIS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIEDINCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTIES REGARDING THE CONTENTS ORACCURACY OF THE WORK. 

6. Limitation on Liability. EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT REQUIRED BY APPLICABLELAW, AND EXCEPT FOR DAMAGES ARISING FROM LIABILITY TO A THIRD PARTYRESULTING FROM BREACH OF THE WARRANTIES IN SECTION 5, IN NO EVENT WILLLICENSOR BE LIABLE TO YOU ON ANY LEGAL THEORY FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES ARISING OUT OFTHIS LICENSE OR THE USE OF THE WORK, EVEN IF LICENSOR HAS BEEN ADVISEDOF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. 

7. Termination

a. This License and the rights granted hereunder will terminateautomatically upon any breach by You of the terms of this License. Individuals or entities who have received Collective Works from Youunder this License, however, will not have their licenses terminatedprovided such individuals or entities remain in full compliance withthose licenses. Sections 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 8 will survive anytermination of this License. 

b. Subject to the above terms and conditions, the license granted hereis perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright in the Work). Notwithstanding the above, Licensor reserves the right to release theWork under different license terms or to stop distributing the Work atany time; provided, however that any such election will not serve towithdraw this License (or any other license that has been, or isrequired to be, granted under the terms of this License), and thisLicense will continue in full force and effect unless terminated asstated above. 

8. Miscellaneous

a. Each time You distribute or publicly digitally perform the Work or aCollective Work, the Licensor offers to the recipient a license to theWork on the same terms and conditions as the license granted to Youunder this License. 

b. If any provision of this License is invalid or unenforceable underapplicable law, it shall not affect the validity or enforceability ofthe remainder of the terms of this License, and without further actionby the parties to this agreement, such provision shall be reformed tothe minimum extent necessary to make such provision valid andenforceable. 

c. No term or provision of this License shall be deemed waived and nobreach consented to unless such waiver or consent shall be in writingand signed by the party to be charged with such waiver or consent. 

d. This License constitutes the entire agreement between the partieswith respect to the Work licensed here. There are no understandings, agreements or representations with respect to the Work not specifiedhere. Licensor shall not be bound by any additional provisions that mayappear in any communication from You. This License may not be modifiedwithout the mutual written agreement of the Licensor and You. 

--

======== PROLOGUE ========

I lived long enough to see the cure for death; to see the rise of theBitchun Society, to learn ten languages; to compose three symphonies; torealize my boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World; to seethe death of the workplace and of work. 

I never thought I'd live to see the day when Keep A-Movin' Dan woulddecide to deadhead until the heat death of the Universe. 

Dan was in his second or third blush of youth when I first met him, sometime late-XXI. He was a rangy cowpoke, apparent 25 or so, allrawhide squint-lines and sunburned neck, boots worn thin and infinitelycomfortable. I was in the middle of my Chem thesis, my fourth Doctorate, and he was taking a break from Saving the World, chilling on campus inToronto and core-dumping for some poor Anthro major. We hooked up at theGrad Students' Union -- the GSU, or Gazoo for those who knew -- on abusy Friday night, spring-ish. I was fighting a coral-slow battle for astool at the scratched bar, inching my way closer every time the pressof bodies shifted, and he had one of the few seats, surrounded by alitter of cigarette junk and empties, clearly encamped. 

Some duration into my foray, he cocked his head at me and raised a sun-bleached eyebrow. "You get any closer, son, and we're going to have toget a pre-nup. "

I was apparent forty or so, and I thought about bridling at being calledson, but I looked into his eyes and decided that he had enough realtimethat he could call me son anytime he wanted. I backed off a little andapologized. 

He struck a cig and blew a pungent, strong plume over the bartender'shead. "Don't worry about it. I'm probably a little over accustomed topersonal space. "

I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard anyone on-world talk aboutpersonal space. With the mortality rate at zero and the birth-rate atnon-zero, the world was inexorably accreting a dense carpet of people, even with the migratory and deadhead drains on the population. "You'vebeen jaunting?" I asked -- his eyes were too sharp for him to havemissed an instant's experience to deadheading. 

He chuckled. "No sir, not me. I'm into the kind of macho shitheaderythat you only come across on-world. Jaunting's for play; I need work. "The bar-glass tinkled a counterpoint. 

I took a moment to conjure a HUD with his Whuffie score on it. I had toresize the window -- he had too many zeroes to fit on my standarddisplay. I tried to act cool, but he caught the upwards flick of my eyesand then their involuntary widening. He tried a little aw-shucksery, gave it up and let a prideful grin show. 

"I try not to pay it much mind. Some people, they get overly grateful. "He must've seen my eyes flick up again, to pull his Whuffie history. "Wait, don't go doing that -- I'll tell you about it, you really got toknow. 

"Damn, you know, it's so easy to get used to life without hyperlinks. You'd think you'd really miss 'em, but you don't. "

And it clicked for me. He was a missionary -- one of those fringe-dwellers who act as emissary from the Bitchun Society to the benightedcorners of the world where, for whatever reasons, they want to die, starve, and choke on petrochem waste. It's amazing that thesecommunities survive more than a generation; in the Bitchun Societyproper, we usually outlive our detractors. The missionaries don't havesuch a high success rate -- you have to be awfully convincing to getthrough to a culture that's already successfully resisted nearly acentury's worth of propaganda -- but when you convert a whole village, you accrue all the Whuffie they have to give. More often, missionariesend up getting refreshed from a backup after they aren't heard from fora decade or so. I'd never met one in the flesh before. 

"How many successful missions have you had?" I asked. 

"Figured it out, huh? I've just come off my fifth in twenty years --counterrevolutionaries hidden out in the old Cheyenne Mountain NORADsite, still there a generation later. " He sandpapered his whiskers withhis fingertips. "Their parents went to ground after their life's savingsvanished, and they had no use for tech any more advanced than a rifle. Plenty of those, though. "

He spun a fascinating yarn then, how he slowly gained the acceptance ofthe mountain-dwellers, and then their trust, and then betrayed it insubtle, beneficent ways: introducing Free Energy to their greenhouses, then a gengineered crop or two, then curing a couple deaths, slowlyinching them toward the Bitchun Society, until they couldn't rememberwhy they hadn't wanted to be a part of it from the start. Now they weremostly off-world, exploring toy frontiers with unlimited energy andunlimited supplies and deadheading through the dull times en route. 

"I guess it'd be too much of a shock for them to stay on-world. Theythink of us as the enemy, you know -- they had all kinds of plans drawnup for when we invaded them and took them away; hollow suicide teeth, booby-traps, fall-back-and-rendezvous points for the survivors. Theyjust can't get over hating us, even though we don't even know theyexist. Off-world, they can pretend that they're still living rough andhard. " He rubbed his chin again, his hard calluses grating over hiswhiskers. "But for me, the real rough life is right here, on-world. Thelittle enclaves, each one is like an alternate history of humanity --what if we'd taken the Free Energy, but not deadheading? What if we'dtaken deadheading, but only for the critically ill, not for people whodidn't want to be bored on long bus-rides? Or no hyperlinks, noadhocracy, no Whuffie? Each one is different and wonderful. "

I have a stupid habit of arguing for the sake of, and I found myselfsaying, "Wonderful? Oh sure, nothing finer than, oh, let's see, dying, starving, freezing, broiling, killing, cruelty and ignorance and painand misery. I know I sure miss it. "

Keep A-Movin' Dan snorted. "You think a junkie misses sobriety?"

I knocked on the bar. "Hello! There aren't any junkies anymore!"

He struck another cig. "But you know what a junkie _is_, right? Junkiesdon't miss sobriety, because they don't remember how sharp everythingwas, how the pain made the joy sweeter. We can't remember what it waslike to work to earn our keep; to worry that there might not be_enough_, that we might get sick or get hit by a bus. We don't rememberwhat it was like to take chances, and we sure as shit don't rememberwhat it felt like to have them pay off. "

He had a point. Here I was, only in my second or third adulthood, andalready ready to toss it all in and do something, _anything_, else. Hehad a point -- but I wasn't about to admit it. "So you say. I say, Itake a chance when I strike up a conversation in a bar, when I fall inlove. . . And what about the deadheads? Two people I know, they justwent deadhead for ten thousand years! Tell me that's not taking achance!" Truth be told, almost everyone I'd known in my eighty-someyears were deadheading or jaunting or just _gone_. Lonely days, then. 

"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 comestime to reanimate. In case you haven't noticed, it's getting a littlecrowded 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 worldwas getting a little crowded a hundred years ago, before Free Energy. Like it was getting too greenhousey, too nukey, too hot or too cold. Wefixed it then, we'll fix it again when the time comes. I'm gonna be herein ten thousand years, you damn betcha, but I think I'll do it the longway around. "

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

"I think that if I'm still here in ten thousand years, I'm going to becrazy as hell. Ten thousand years, pal! Ten thousand years ago, thestate-of-the-art was a goat. You really think you're going to beanything recognizably human in a hundred centuries? Me, I'm notinterested in being a post-person. I'm going to wake up one day, and I'mgoing to say, 'Well, I guess I've seen about enough, ' and that'll be mylast day. "

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

He embarrassed me by making a show of thinking it over again, making mefeel like I was just a half-pissed glib poltroon. "I suppose it'sbecause nothing else is. I've always known that someday, I was going tostop moving, stop seeking, stop kicking, and have done with it. There'llcome 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 vibeand because of his lifestyle, and he somehow grew to take over everyconversation I had for the next six months. I pinged his Whuffie a fewtimes, and noticed that it was climbing steadily upward as heaccumulated more esteem from the people he met. 

I'd pretty much pissed away most of my Whuffie -- all the savings fromthe symphonies and the first three theses -- drinking myself stupid atthe Gazoo, hogging library terminals, pestering profs, until I'dexpended 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 chumas exotic as Keep-A-Movin' Dan, the legendary missionary who visited theonly places left that were closed to the Bitchun Society. I can't sayfor sure why he hung around with me. He mentioned once or twice thathe'd liked my symphonies, and he'd read my Ergonomics thesis on applyingtheme-park crowd-control techniques in urban settings, and liked what Ihad to say there. But I think it came down to us having a good timeneedling 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 thatdeadheading was a strong indicator that one's personal reservoir ofintrospection and creativity was dry; and that without struggle, thereis no real victory. 

This was a good fight, one we could have a thousand times withoutresolving. I'd get him to concede that Whuffie recaptured the trueessence of money: in the old days, if you were broke but respected, youwouldn't starve; contrariwise, if you were rich and hated, no sum couldbuy you security and peace. By measuring the thing that money reallyrepresented -- 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 tomy allowing that while, yes, we might someday encounter alien specieswith wild and fabulous ways, that right now, there was a slightlydepressing homogeneity to the world. 

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

He'd gone. The Anthro major he'd been torturing with his war-storiessaid that they'd wrapped up that morning, and he'd headed to the walledcity of Tijuana, to take his shot with the descendants of a platoon ofUS Marines who'd settled there and cut themselves off from the BitchunSociety. 

So I went to Disney World. 

In deference to Dan, I took the flight in realtime, in the minusculecabin reserved for those of us who stubbornly refused to be frozen andstacked like cordwood for the two hour flight. I was the only one takingthe trip in realtime, but a flight attendant dutifully served me aurine-sample-sized orange juice and a rubbery, pungent, cheese omelet. Istared out the windows at the infinite clouds while the autopilot bankedaround 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 enoughthat it bugged me. Her name was Lil, and she was second-generationDisney World, her parents being among the original ad-hocracy that tookover 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, fromher shining red hair to her careful accounting of each gear and cog inthe animatronics that were in her charge. Her folks were in canopic jarsin Kissimmee, deadheading for a few centuries. 

On a muggy Wednesday, we dangled our feet over the edge of the LibertyBelle's riverboat pier, watching the listless Confederate flag over FortLanghorn on Tom Sawyer Island by moonlight. The Magic Kingdom was allclosed up and every last guest had been chased out the gate underneaththe Main Street train station, and we were able to breathe a heavy sighof relief, shuck parts of our costumes, and relax together while thecicadas sang. 

I was more than a century old, but there was still a kind of magic inhaving 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 shoulderand 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 oldnews 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 favoriteduties, exploring every inch of the rides in her care with the lightson, after the horde of tourists had gone. We both liked to see theunderpinnings of the magic. Maybe that was why I kept picking at therelationship. 

"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 andgently tweaked my nipple, and I gave a satisfying little jump. I thinkthe age difference bothered her, too, though she teased me for lettingit get to me. 

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

I liked it too, but I really liked just sitting there with her, watchingthe water and the trees. I was just getting ready to go when I heard asoft _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, thoughit'd been ten years since we last got drunk at the Gazoo together. Imuted 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 outher 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 asob. 

I turned and gave Lil such a look, she dropped her pipe. "How can Ihelp?" she said, softly but swiftly. I waved her off and switched thephone to full-vocal mode. My voice sounded unnaturally loud in thecricket-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 onthe couch by the door. I'll be there in --" I shot a look at Lil, whoknew the castmember-only roads better than I. She flashed ten fingers atme. "Ten minutes. "

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

"What's up?" Lil asked. 

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

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

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

#

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

Dan was apparent fifty plus, a little paunchy and stubbled. He hadraccoon-mask bags under his eyes and he slumped listlessly. As Iapproached, I pinged his Whuffie and was startled to see that it haddropped 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 atmidnight; 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 withLil, out in Kissimmee. He smoked eight cigarettes on the twenty minuteride, hammering one after another into his mouth, filling my runaboutwith stinging clouds. I kept glancing at him in the rear-view. He hadhis eyes closed, and in repose he looked dead. I could hardly believethat this was my vibrant action-hero pal of yore. 

Surreptitiously, I called Lil's phone. "I'm bringing him home, " Isubvocalized. "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. Loveyou. "

"Back atcha, kid, " I said. 

As we approached the tacky little swaybacked ranch-house, he opened hiseyes. "You're a pal, Jules. " I waved him off. "No, really. I tried tothink 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 needit. "

Lil was waiting on the sofa, a folded blanket and an extra pillow on theside table, a pot of coffee and some Disneyland Beijing mugs besidethem. 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 surpriseddisapproval. Us oldsters who predate Whuffie know that it's important;but to the kids, it's the _world_. Someone without any is automaticallysuspect. I watched her recover quickly, smile, and surreptitiously wipeher 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'lllet 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 couldtalk 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 anarmchair. She pulled out her pipe and lit a rock. I went through mycrack period before she was born, just after they made it decaf, and Ialways felt old when I saw her and her friends light up. Dan surprisedme 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 hiscoffee. 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 downto, " he said. 

"Who doesn't?" I said. 

"I really thought I could do it. I knew that someday I'd run out ofthings to do, things to see. I knew that I'd finish some day. Youremember, we used to argue about it. I swore I'd be done, and that wouldbe the end of it. And now I am. There isn't a single place left on-worldthat isn't part of the Bitchun Society. There isn't a single thing leftthat 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 likea baby, in great, snoring sobs that shook his whole body. Lil went intothe kitchen and got some tissue, and passed it to me. I sat alongsidehim 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 thelast eight years in Istanbul, writing papers on my missions, about thecommunities. I did some followup studies, interviews. No one wasinterested. Not even me. I smoked a lot of hash. It didn't help. So, onemorning I woke up and went to the bazaar and said good bye to thefriends I'd made there. Then I went to a pharmacy and had the man makeme up a lethal injection. He wished me good luck and I went back to myrooms. I sat there with the hypo all afternoon, then I decided to sleepon it, and I got up the next morning and did it all over again. I lookedinside myself, and I saw that I didn't have the guts. I just didn't havethe guts. I've stared down the barrels of a hundred guns, had a thousandknives pressed up against my throat, but I didn't have the guts to pressthat 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 killedyourself right now, you'd just be a washed-up loser who couldn't hackit. If you'd done it ten years earlier, you would've been going out ontop -- a champion, retiring permanently. " She set her mug down with aharder-than-necessary clunk. 

Sometimes, Lil and I are right on the same wavelength. Sometimes, it'slike 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 todo. "

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

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

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

"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 lookbeat. "

"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 therunning of Liberty Square with a group of other interested, compatiblesouls. They did a fine job, racked up gobs of Whuffie, and anyone whocame around and tried to take it over would be so reviled by the gueststhey 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 doa better job. 

It can break down, though. There were pretenders to the throne -- agroup who'd worked with the original ad-hocracy and then had moved offto other pursuits -- some of them had gone to school, some of them hadmade movies, written books, or gone off to Disneyland Beijing to helpstart 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 theMagic Kingdom, preserving the wheezing technology in the face of a Parkthat changed almost daily. The newcomer/old-timers were on-side with therest of the Park, had their support, and looked like they might make asuccessful go of it. 

So it fell to Lil to make sure that there were no bugs in the meagerattractions of Liberty Square: the Hall of the Presidents, the LibertyBelle riverboat, and the glorious Haunted Mansion, arguably the coolestattraction to come from the fevered minds of the old-time DisneyImagineers. 

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

It had been two weeks since Dan's arrival, and though I'd barely seenhim 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 frontof our porch. My phone rang three or four times a day, Dan checking infrom his rounds of the Park, seeking out some way to accumulate personalcapital. 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 tiedback in a neat bun, sweat sheening her wiry freckled arms, smelling ofgirl-sweat and machine lubricant, she made me wish there were a mattresssomewhere 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 hadstartled 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 whatshe's up to. "

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

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

She'd leveraged her success into a deal with the Adventureland ad-hocsto rehab the Pirates of the Caribbean, and their backstage areas werepiled high with reference: treasure chests and cutlasses and bowsprits. It was terrifying to walk through; the Pirates was the last ride Waltpersonally supervised, and we'd thought it was sacrosanct. But Debra hadbuilt a Pirates sim in Beijing, based on Chend I Sao, the XIXth centuryChinese pirate queen, which was credited with rescuing the Park fromobscurity and ruin. The Florida iteration would incorporate the bestaspects of its Chinese cousin -- the AI-driven sims that communicatedwith each other and with the guests, greeting them by name each timethey rode and spinning age-appropriate tales of piracy on the high seas;the spectacular fly-through of the aquatic necropolis of rotting junkson the sea-floor; the thrilling pitch and yaw of the sim as it weathereda violent, breath-taking storm -- but with Western themes: wafts ofJamaican pepper sauce crackling through the air; liquid Afro-Caribbeanaccents; and swordfights conducted in the manner of the pirates whoplied the blue waters of the New World. Identical sims would stack likecordwood in the space currently occupied by the bulky ride-apparatus anddioramas, quintupling capacity and halving load-time. 

"So, what's she up to?"

Lil extracted herself from the Rail-Splitter's mechanical guts and madea comical moue of worry. "She's rehabbing the Pirates -- and doing anincredible job. They're ahead of schedule, they've got good net-buzz, the focus groups are cumming themselves. " The comedy went out of herexpression, 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 humand whine of his servos. Lil mimed twiddling a knob and his audiotrackkicked 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 drinkfrom the Ohio. If destruction be our lot, then we ourselves must be itsauthor -- and its finisher. " She mimed turning down the gain and he fellsilent again. 

"You said it, Mr. President, " she said, and fired her finger at himagain, powering him down. She bent and adjusted his hand-sewn periodtopcoat, 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'sgood work, " I said. I'd fallen into the easy castmember mode ofspeaking, voicing bland affirmations. Hearing the words, I felt a flushof embarrassment. I pulled her into a long, hard hug and fumbled forbetter reassurance. Finding no words that would do, I gave her a finalsqueeze and let her go. 

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

This was a 180-degree reversal of her position on the subject the lasttime we'd talked, but you don't live more than a century withoutlearning when to point out that sort of thing and when not to. 

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

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

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

"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 itfinished and started in on organic memory. My eyes rolled back in myhead 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. Somepeople 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 needto convert its detractors, just outlive them. 

The first time I died, it was not long after my sixtieth birthday. I wasSCUBA diving at Playa Coral, near Veradero, Cuba. Of course, I don'tremember the incident, but knowing my habits at that particular dive-site and having read the dive-logs of my SCUBA-buddies, I'vereconstructed the events. 

I was eeling my way through the lobster-caves, with a borrowed bottleand mask. I'd also borrowed a wetsuit, but I wasn't wearing it -- theblood-temp salt water was balm, and I hated erecting barriers between itand my skin. The caves were made of coral and rocks, and they coiled andtwisted like intestines. Through each hole and around each corner, therewas a hollow, rough sphere of surpassing, alien beauty. Giant lobstersskittered over the walls and through the holes. Schools of fish asbright as jewels darted and executed breath-taking precision maneuversas I disturbed their busy days. I do some of my best thinking underwater, and I'm often slipping off into dangerous reverie at depth. Normally, my diving buddies ensure that I don't hurt myself, but thistime I got away from them, spidering forward into a tiny hole. 

Where I got stuck. 

My diving buddies were behind me, and I rapped on my bottle with thehilt of my knife until one of them put a hand on my shoulder. My buddiessaw what was up, and attempted to pull me loose, but my bottle andbuoyancy-control vest were firmly wedged. The others exchanged handsignals, silently debating the best way to get me loose. Suddenly, I wasthrashing and kicking, and then I disappeared into the cave, minus myvest and bottle. I'd apparently attempted to cut through my vest'sstraps and managed to sever the tube of my regulator. After inhaling ajolt of sea water, I'd thrashed free into the cave, rolling into amonstrous patch of spindly fire-coral. I'd inhaled another lungful ofwater and kicked madly for a tiny hole in the cave's ceiling, whence mybuddies retrieved me shortly thereafter, drowned-blue except for thepatchy red welts from the stinging coral. 

In those days, making a backup was a lot more complicated; the proceduretook most of a day, and had to be undertaken at a special clinic. Luckily, I'd had one made just before I left for Cuba, a few weeksearlier. My next-most-recent backup was three years old, dating from thecompletion of my second symphony. 

They recovered me from backup and into a force-grown clone at TorontoGeneral. As far as I knew, I'd laid down in the backup clinic one momentand arisen the next. It took most of a year to get over the feeling thatthe whole world was putting a monstrous joke over on me, that thedrowned corpse I'd seen was indeed my own. In my mind, the rebirth wasfigurative as well as literal -- the missing time was enough that Ifound myself hard-pressed to socialize with my pre-death friends. 

I told Dan the story during our first friendship, and he immediatelypounced on the fact that I'd gone to Disney World to spend a weeksorting out my feelings, reinventing myself, moving to space, marrying acrazy lady. He found it very curious that I always rebooted myself atDisney World. When I told him that I was going to live there someday, heasked me if that would mean that I was done reinventing myself. Sometimes, as I ran my fingers through Lil's sweet red curls, I thoughtof that remark and sighed great gusts of contentment and marveled thatmy friend Dan had been so prescient. 

The next time I died, they'd improved the technology somewhat. I'd had amassive stroke in my seventy-third year, collapsing on the ice in themiddle of a house-league hockey game. By the time they cut my helmetaway, the hematomae had crushed my brain into a pulpy, blood-sottedmess. I'd been lax in backing up, and I lost most of a year. But theywoke me gently, with a computer-generated precis of the events of themissing interval, and a counselor contacted me daily for a year until Ifelt at home again in my skin. Again, my life rebooted, and I foundmyself in Disney World, methodically flensing away the relationships I'dbuilt and starting afresh in Boston, living on the ocean floor andworking the heavy-metal harvesters, a project that led, eventually, tomy Chem thesis at U of T. 

After I was shot dead at the Tiki Room, I had the opportunity toappreciate the great leaps that restores had made in the intervening tenyears. I woke in my own bed, instantly aware of the events that led upto my third death as seen from various third-party POVs: securityfootage from the Adventureland cameras, synthesized memories extractedfrom Dan's own backup, and a computer-generated fly-through of thescene. I woke feeling preternaturally calm and cheerful, and knowingthat I felt that way because of certain temporary neurotransmitterpresets that had been put in place when I was restored. 

Dan and Lil sat at my bedside. Lil's tired, smiling face was limned withhairs that had snuck loose of her ponytail. She took my hand and kissedthe smooth knuckles. Dan smiled beneficently at me and I was seized witha warm, comforting feeling of being surrounded by people who reallyloved me. I dug for words appropriate to the scene, decided to wing it, opened my mouth and said, to my surprise, "I have to pee. "

Dan and Lil smiled at each other. I lurched out of the bed, naked, andthumped to the bathroom. My muscles were wonderfully limber, with abrand-new spring to them. After I flushed I leaned over and took hold ofmy ankles, then pulled my head right to the floor, feeling the marvelousflexibility of my back and legs and buttocks. A scar on my knee wasmissing, as were the many lines that had crisscrossed my fingers. When Ilooked in the mirror, I saw that my nose and earlobes were smaller andperkier. The familiar crow's-feet and the frown-lines between myeyebrows were gone. I had a day's beard all over -- head, face, pubis, arms, legs. I ran my hands over my body and chuckled at the ticklishnewness of it all. I was briefly tempted to depilate all over, just tokeep this feeling of newness forever, but the neurotransmitter presetswere evaporating and a sense of urgency over my murder was creeping upon me. 

I tied a towel around my waist and made my way back to the bedroom. Thesmells of tile-cleaner and flowers and rejuve were bright in my nose, effervescent as camphor. Dan and Lil stood when I came into the room andhelped me to the bed. "Well, this _sucks_, " I said. 

I'd gone straight from the uplink through the utilidors -- three quickcuts of security cam footage, one at the uplink, one in the corridor, and one at the exit in the underpass between Liberty Square andAdventureland. I seemed bemused and a little sad as I emerged from thedoor, and began to weave my way through the crowd, using a kind ofsinuous, darting shuffle that I'd developed when I was doing field-workon my crowd-control thesis. I cut rapidly through the lunchtime crowdtoward the long roof of the Tiki Room, thatched with strips ofshimmering aluminum cut and painted to look like long grass. 

Fuzzy shots now, from Dan's POV, of me moving closer to him, passingclose to a group of teenaged girls with extra elbows and knees, wearingenvironmentally controlled cloaks and cowls covered with Epcot Centerlogomarks. One of them is wearing a pith helmet, from the Jungle Tradersshop outside of the Jungle Cruise. Dan's gaze flicks away, to the TikiRoom's entrance, where there is a short queue of older men, then back, just as the girl with the pith helmet draws a stylish little organicpistol, like a penis with a tail that coils around her arm. Casually, grinning, she raises her arm and gestures with the pistol, exactly likeLil does with her finger when she's uploading, and the pistol lungesforward. Dan's gaze flicks back to me. I'm pitching over, my lungsbursting out of my chest and spreading before me like wings, spinalgristle and viscera showering the guests before me. A piece of mynametag, now shrapnel, strikes Dan in the forehead, causing him toblink. When he looks again, the group of girls is still there, but thegirl with the pistol is long gone. 

The fly-through is far less confused. Everyone except me, Dan and thegirl is grayed-out. We're limned in highlighter yellow, moving in slow-motion. I emerge from the underpass and the girl moves from the SwissFamily Robinson Treehouse to the group of her friends. Dan starts tomove towards me. The girl raises, arms and fires her pistol. The self-guiding smart-slug, keyed to my body chemistry, flies low, near groundlevel, weaving between the feet of the crowd, moving just below thespeed of sound. When it reaches me, it screams upwards and into myspine, detonating once it's entered my chest cavity. 

The girl has already made a lot of ground, back toward theAdventureland/Main Street, USA gateway. The fly-through speeds up, following her as she merges with the crowds on the street, ducking andweaving between them, moving toward the breezeway at Sleeping BeautyCastle. She vanishes, then reappears, forty minutes later, inTomorrowland, near the new Space Mountain complex, then disappearsagain. 

"Has anyone ID'd the girl?" I asked, once I'd finished reliving theevents. The anger was starting to boil within me now. My new fistsclenched for the first time, soft palms and uncallused fingertips. 

Dan shook his head. "None of the girls she was with had ever seen herbefore. The face was one of the Seven Sisters -- Hope. " The SevenSisters were a trendy collection of designer faces. Every second teenagegirl wore one of them. 

"How about Jungle Traders?" I asked. "Did they have a record of the pithhelmet purchase?"

Lil frowned. "We ran the Jungle Traders purchases back for six months:only three matched the girl's apparent age; all three have alibis. Chances are she stole it. "

"Why?" I asked, finally. In my mind's eye, I saw my lungs bursting outof my chest, like wings, like jellyfish, vertebrae spraying likeshrapnel. I saw the girl's smile, an almost sexual smirk as she pulledthe trigger on me. 

"It wasn't random, " Lil said. "The slug was definitely keyed to you --that means that she'd gotten close to you at some point. "

Right -- which meant that she'd been to Disney World in the last tenyears. That narrowed it down, all right. 

"What happened to her after Tomorrowland?" I said. 

"We don't know, " Lil said. "Something wrong with the cameras. We losther and she never reappeared. " She sounded hot and angry -- she tookequipment failures in the Magic Kingdom personally. 

"Who'd want to do this?" I asked, hating the self-pity in my voice. Itwas the first time I'd been murdered, but I didn't need to be a drama-queen about it. 

Dan's eyes got a far-away look. "Sometimes, people do things for reasonsthat seem perfectly reasonable to them, that the rest of the worldcouldn't hope to understand. I've seen a few assassinations, and theynever made sense afterwards. " He stroked his chin. "Sometimes, it'sbetter to look for temperament, rather than motivation: who _could_ dosomething like this?"

Right. All we needed to do was investigate all the psychopaths who'dvisited the Magic Kingdom in ten years. That narrowed it downconsiderably. I pulled up a HUD and checked the time. It had been fourdays since my murder. I had a shift coming up, working the turnstiles atthe Haunted Mansion. I liked to pull a couple of those shifts a month, just to keep myself grounded; it helped to take a reality check while Iwas churning away in the rarified climate of my crowd-controlsimulations. 

I stood and went to my closet, started to dress. 

"_What_ are you doing?" Lil asked, alarmed. 

"I've got a shift. I'm running late. "

"You're in no shape to work, " Lil said, tugging at my elbow. I jerkedfree of her. 

"I'm fine -- good as new. " I barked a humorless laugh. "I'm not going tolet those bastards disrupt my life any more. "

_Those bastards_? I thought -- when had I decided that there was morethan one? But I knew it was true. There was no way that this was allplanned by one person: it had been executed too precisely, toothoroughly. 

Dan moved to block the bedroom door. "Wait a second, " he said. "You needrest. "

I fixed him with a doleful glare. "I'll decide that, " I said. He steppedaside. 

"I'll tag along, then, " he said. "Just in case. "

I pinged my Whuffie. I was up a couple percentiles -- sympathy Whuffie-- but it was falling: Dan and Lil were radiating disapproval. Screw 'em. 

I got into my runabout and Dan scrambled for the passenger door as I putit in gear and sped out. 

"Are you sure you're all right?" Dan said as I nearly rolled therunabout taking the corner at the end of our cul-de-sac. 

"Why wouldn't I be?" I said. "I'm as good as new. "

"Funny choice of words, " he said. "Some would say that you _were_ new. "

I groaned. "Not this argument again, " I said. "I feel like me and no oneelse is making that claim. Who cares if I've been restored from abackup?"

"All I'm saying is, there's a difference between _you_ and an exact copyof you, isn't there?"

I knew what he was doing, distracting me with one of our old fights, butI couldn't resist the bait, and as I marshalled my arguments, itactually helped calm me down some. Dan was that kind of friend, a personwho knew you better than you knew yourself. "So you're saying that ifyou were obliterated and then recreated, atom-for-atom, that youwouldn't be you anymore?"

"For the sake of argument, sure. Being destroyed and recreated isdifferent from not being destroyed at all, right?"

"Brush up on your quantum mechanics, pal. You're being destroyed andrecreated a trillion times a second. "

"On a very, very small level --"

"What difference does that make?"

"Fine, I'll concede that. But you're not really an atom-for-atom copy. You're a clone, with a copied _brain_ -- that's not the same as quantumdestruction. "

"Very nice thing to say to someone who's just been murdered, pal. Yougot a problem with clones?"

And we were off and running. 

#

The Mansion's cast were sickeningly cheerful and solicitous. Each ofthem made a point of coming around and touching the stiff, starchedshoulder of my butler's costume, letting me know that if there wasanything they could do for me. . . I gave them all a fixed smile andtried to concentrate on the guests, how they waited, when they arrived, how they dispersed through the exit gate. Dan hovered nearby, occasionally taking the eight minute, twenty-two second ride-through, running interference for me with the other castmembers. 

He was nearby when my break came up. I changed into civvies and wewalked over the cobbled streets, past the Hall of the Presidents, notingas I rounded the corner that there was something different about thequeue-area. Dan groaned. "They did it already, " he said. 

I looked closer. The turnstiles were blocked by a sandwich board: Mickeyin a Ben Franklin wig and bifocals, holding a trowel. "Excuse our mess!"the sign declared. "We're renovating to serve you better!"

I spotted one of Debra's cronies standing behind the sign, a self-satisfied smile on his face. He'd started off life as a squat, northernChinese, but had had his bones lengthened and his cheekbones raised sothat he looked almost elfin. I took one look at his smile and understood-- Debra had established a toehold in Liberty Square. 

"They filed plans for the new Hall with the steering committee an hourafter you got shot. The committee loved the plans; so did the net. They're promising not to touch the Mansion. "

"You didn't mention this, " I said, hotly. 

"We thought you'd jump to conclusions. The timing was bad, but there'sno indication that they arranged for the shooter. Everyone's got analibi; furthermore, they've all offered to submit their backups forproof. "

"Right, " I said. "Right. So they just _happened_ to have plans for a newHall standing by. And they just _happened_ to file them after I gotshot, when all our ad-hocs were busy worrying about me. It's all a bigcoincidence. "

Dan shook his head. "We're not stupid, Jules. No one thinks that it's acoincidence. Debra's the sort of person who keeps a lot of plansstanding by, just in case. But that just makes her a well-preparedopportunist, not a murderer. "

I felt nauseated and exhausted. I was enough of a castmember that Isought out a utilidor before I collapsed against a wall, head down. Defeat seeped through me, saturating me. 

Dan crouched down beside me. I looked over at him. He was grinningwryly. "Posit, " he said, "for the moment, that Debra really did do thisthing, set you up so that she could take over. "

I smiled, in spite of myself. This was his explaining act, the thing hewould do whenever I fell into one of his rhetorical tricks back in theold days. "All right, I've posited it. "

"Why would she: one, take out you instead of Lil or one of the real old-timers; two, go after the Hall of Presidents instead of Tom SawyerIsland or even the Mansion; and three, follow it up with such a blatant, suspicious move?"

"All right, " I said, warming to the challenge. "One: I'm importantenough to be disruptive but not so important as to rate a fullinvestigation. Two: Tom Sawyer Island is too visible, you can't rehab itwithout people seeing the dust from shore. Three, Debra's coming off ofa decade in Beijing, where subtlety isn't real important. "

"Sure, " Dan said, "sure. " Then he launched an answering salvo, and whileI was thinking up my answer, he helped me to my feet and walked me outto my runabout, arguing all the way, so that by the time I noticed weweren't at the Park anymore, I was home and in bed. 

#

With all the Hall's animatronics mothballed for the duration, Lil hadmore time on her hands than she knew what to do with. She hung aroundthe little bungalow, the two of us in the living room, staring blanklyat the windows, breathing shallowly in the claustrophobic, superheatedFlorida air. I had my working notes on queue management for the Mansion, and I pecked at them aimlessly. Sometimes, Lil mirrored my HUD so shecould watch me work, and made suggestions based on her long experience. 

It was a delicate process, this business of increasing throughputwithout harming the guest experience. But for every second I could shaveoff of the queue-to-exit time, I could put another sixty guests throughand lop thirty seconds off total wait-time. And the more guests who gotto experience the Mansion, the more of a Whuffie-hit Debra's peoplewould suffer if they made a move on it. So I dutifully pecked at mynotes, and found three seconds I could shave off the graveyard sequenceby swiveling the Doom Buggy carriages stage-left as they descended fromthe attic window: by expanding their fields-of-vision, I could exposethe guests to all the scenes more quickly. 

I ran the change in fly-through, then implemented it after closing andinvited the other Liberty Square ad-hocs to come and test it out. 

It was another muggy winter evening, prematurely dark. The ad-hocs hadenough friends and family with them that we were able to simulate anoff-peak queue-time, and we all stood and sweated in the preshow area, waiting for the doors to swing open, listening to the wolf-cries andassorted boo-spookery from the hidden speakers. 

The doors swung open, revealing Lil in a rotting maid's uniform, hereyes lined with black, her skin powdered to a deathly pallor. She gaveus a cold, considering glare, then intoned, "Master Gracey requests morebodies. "

As we crowded into the cool, musty gloom of the parlor, Lil contrived togive my ass an affectionate squeeze. I turned to return the favor, andsaw Debra's elfin comrade looming over Lil's shoulder. My smile died onmy lips. 

The man locked eyes with me for a moment, and I saw something in there-- some admixture of cruelty and worry that I didn't know what to makeof. He looked away immediately. I'd known that Debra would have spies inthe crowd, of course, but with elf-boy watching, I resolved to make thisthe best show I knew how. 

It's subtle, this business of making the show better from within. Lilhad already slid aside the paneled wall that led to stretch-room numbertwo, the most recently serviced one. Once the crowd had moved inside, Itried to lead their eyes by adjusting my body language to poses ofsubtle attention directed at the new spotlights. When the newlyremastered soundtrack came from behind the sconce-bearing gargoyles atthe corners of the octagonal room, I leaned my body slightly in thedirection of the moving stereo-image. And an instant before the lightssnapped out, I ostentatiously cast my eyes up into the scrim ceiling, noting that others had taken my cue, so they were watching when theUV-lit corpse dropped from the pitch-dark ceiling, jerking against thenoose at its neck. 

The crowd filed into the second queue area, where they boarded the DoomBuggies. There was a low buzz of marveling conversation as we made ourway onto the moving sidewalk. I boarded my Doom Buggy and an instantlater, someone slid in beside me. It was the elf. 

He made a point of not making eye contact with me, but I sensed hissidelong glances at me as we rode through past the floating chandelierand into the corridor where the portraits' eyes watched us. Two yearsbefore, I'd accelerated this sequence and added some random swivel tothe Doom Buggies, shaving 25 seconds off the total, taking the hourlythroughput cap from 2365 to 2600. It was the proof-of-concept that ledto all the other seconds I'd shaved away since. The violent pitching ofthe Buggy brought me and the elf into inadvertent contact with oneanother, and when I brushed his hand as I reached for the safety bar, Ifelt that it was cold and sweaty. 

He was nervous! _He_ was nervous. What did _he_ have to be nervousabout? I was the one who'd been murdered -- maybe he was nervous becausehe was supposed to finish the job. I cast my own sidelong looks at him, trying to see suspicious bulges in his tight clothes, but the DoomBuggy's pebbled black plastic interior was too dim. Dan was in the Buggybehind us, with one of the Mansion's regular castmembers. I rang hiscochlea and subvocalized: "Get ready to jump out on my signal. " Anyoneleaving their Buggy would interrupt an infrared beam and stop the ridesystem. I knew I could rely on Dan to trust me without a lot ofexplaining, which meant that I could keep a close watch on Debra'scrony. 

We went past the hallway of mirrors and into the hallway of doors, wheremonstrous hands peeked out around the sills, straining against thehinges, recorded groans mixed in with pounding. I thought about it -- ifI wanted to kill someone on the Mansion, what would be the best place todo it? The attic staircase-- the next sequence -- seemed like a goodbet. A cold clarity washed over me. The elf would kill me in the gloomof the staircase, dump me out over the edge at the blind turn toward thegraveyard, and that would be it. Would he be able to do it if I werestaring straight at him? He seemed terribly nervous as it was. Iswiveled in my seat and looked him straight in the eye. 

He quirked half a smile at me and nodded a greeting. I kept on staringat him, my hands balled into fists, ready for anything. We rode down thestaircase, facing up, listening to the clamour of voices from thecemetery and the squawk of the red-eyed raven. I caught sight of thequaking groundkeeper animatronic from the corner of my eye and startled. I let out a subvocal squeal and was pitched forward as the ride systemshuddered to a stop. 

"Jules?" came Dan's voice in my cochlea. "You all right?"

He'd heard my involuntary note of surprise and had leapt clear of theBuggy, stopping the ride. The elf was looking at me with a mixture ofsurprise and pity. 

"It's all right, it's all right. False alarm. " I paged Lil andsubvocalized to her, telling her to start up the ride ASAP, it was allright. 

I rode the rest of the way with my hands on the safety bar, my eyesfixed ahead of me, steadfastly ignoring the elf. I checked the timer I'dbeen running. The demo was a debacle -- instead of shaving off threeseconds, I'd added thirty. I wanted to cry. 

#

I debarked the Buggy and stalked quickly out of the exit queue, leaningheavily against the fence, staring blindly at the pet cemetery. My headswam: I was out of control, jumping at shadows. I was spooked. 

And I had no reason to be. Sure, I'd been murdered, but what had it costme? A few days of "unconsciousness" while they decanted my backup intomy new body, a merciful gap in memory from my departure at the backupterminal up until my death. I wasn't one of those nuts who took death_seriously_. It wasn't like they'd done something _permanent_. 

In the meantime, I _had_ done something permanent: I'd dug Lil's grave alittle deeper, endangered the ad-hocracy and, worst of all, the Mansion. I'd acted like an idiot. I tasted my dinner, a wolfed-down hamburger, and swallowed hard, forcing down the knob of nausea. 

I sensed someone at my elbow, and thinking it was Lil, come to ask mewhat had gone on, I turned with a sheepish grin and found myself facingthe elf. 

He stuck his hand out and spoke in the flat no-accent of someone runninga language module. "Hi there. We haven't been introduced, but I wantedto tell you how much I enjoy your work. I'm Tim Fung. "

I pumped his hand, which was still cold and particularly clammy in theclose heat of the Florida night. "Julius, " I said, startled at how muchlike a bark it sounded. _Careful_, I thought, _no need to escalate thehostilities. _ "It's kind of you to say that. I like what you-all havedone with the Pirates. "

He smiled: a genuine, embarrassed smile, as though he'd just been givenhigh praise from one of his heroes. "Really? I think it's pretty good --the second time around you get a lot of chances to refine things, reallyclarify the vision. Beijing -- well, it was exciting, but it was rushed, you know? I mean, we were really struggling. Every day, there wasanother pack of squatters who wanted to tear the Park down. Debra usedto send me out to give the children piggyback rides, just to keep ourWhuffie up while she was evicting the squatters. It was good to have theopportunity to refine the designs, revisit them without the floor show. "

I knew about this, of course -- Beijing had been a real struggle for thead-hocs who built it. Lots of them had been killed, many times over. Debra herself had been killed every day for a week and restored to aseries of prepared clones, beta-testing one of the ride systems. It wasfaster than revising the CAD simulations. Debra had a reputation forpursuing expedience. 

"I'm starting to find out how it feels to work under pressure, " I said, and nodded significantly at the Mansion. I was gratified to see him lookembarrassed, then horrified. 

"We would _never_ touch the Mansion, " he said. "It's _perfect_!"

Dan and Lil sauntered up as I was preparing a riposte. They both lookedconcerned -- now that I thought of it, they'd both seemed incrediblyconcerned about me since the day I was revived. 

Dan's gait was odd, stilted, like he was leaning on Lil for support. They looked like a couple. An irrational sear of jealousy jetted throughme. I was an emotional wreck. Still, I took Lil's big, scarred hand inmine as soon as she was in reach, then cuddled her to me protectively. She had changed out of her maid's uniform into civvies: smart coverallswhose micropore fabric breathed in time with her own respiration. 

"Lil, Dan, I want you to meet Tim Fung. He was just telling me warstories from the Pirates project in Beijing. "

Lil waved and Dan gravely shook his hand. "That was some hard work, " Dansaid. 

It occurred to me to turn on some Whuffie monitors. It was normally aninstantaneous reaction to meeting someone, but I was still disoriented. I pinged the elf. He had a lot of left-handed Whuffie; respect garneredfrom people who shared very few of my opinions. I expected that. What Ididn't expect was that his weighted Whuffie score, the one that lentextra credence to the rankings of people I respected, was also high --higher than my own. I regretted my nonlinear behavior even more. Respectfrom the elf -- _Tim_, I had to remember to call him Tim -- would carrya lot of weight in every camp that mattered. 

Dan's score was incrementing upwards, but he still had a rotten profile. He had accrued a good deal of left-handed Whuffie, and I curiouslybacktraced it to the occasion of my murder, when Debra's people hadaccorded him a generous dollop of props for the levelheaded way he hadscraped up my corpse and moved it offstage, minimizing the disturbancein front of their wondrous Pirates. 

I was fugueing, wandering off on the kind of mediated reverie that gotme killed on the reef at Playa Coral, and I came out of it with a start, realizing that the other three were politely ignoring my blown buffer. Icould have run backwards through my short-term memory to get the gist ofthe conversation, but that would have lengthened the pause. Screw it. "So, how're things going over at the Hall of the Presidents?" I askedTim. 

Lil shot me a cautioning look. She'd ceded the Hall to Debra's ad-hocs, that being the only way to avoid the appearance of childish disattentionto the almighty Whuffie. Now she had to keep up the fiction of good-natured cooperation -- that meant not shoulder-surfing Debra, lookingfor excuses to pounce on her work. 

Tim gave us the same half-grin he'd greeted me with. On his smooth, pointed features, it looked almost irredeemably cute. "We're doing goodstuff, I think. Debra's had her eye on the Hall for years, back in theold days, before she went to China. We're replacing the whole thing withbroadband uplinks of gestalts from each of the Presidents' lives:newspaper headlines, speeches, distilled biographies, personal papers. It'll be like having each President _inside_ you, core-dumped in a fewseconds. Debra said we're going to _flash-bake_ the Presidents on yourmind!" His eyes glittered in the twilight. 

Having only recently experienced my own cerebral flash-baking, Tim'sdescription struck a chord in me. My personality seemed to be rattlingaround a little in my mind, as though it had been improperly fitted. Itmade the idea of having the gestalt of 50-some Presidents squashed inalong with it perversely appealing. 

"Wow, " I said. "That sounds wild. What do you have in mind for physicalplant?" The Hall as it stood had a quiet, patriotic dignity cribbed froma hundred official buildings of the dead USA. Messing with it would belike redesigning the stars-and-bars. 

"That's not really my area, " Tim said. "I'm a programmer. But I couldhave one of the designers squirt some plans at you, if you want. "

"That would be fine, " Lil said, taking my elbow. "I think we should beheading home, now, though. " She began to tug me away. Dan took my otherelbow. Behind her, the Liberty Belle glowed like a ghostly wedding cakein the twilight. 

"That's too bad, " Tim said. "My ad-hoc is pulling an all-nighter on thenew Hall. I'm sure they'd love to have you drop by. "

The idea seized hold of me. I would go into the camp of the enemy, sitby their fire, learn their secrets. "That would be _great_!" I said, tooloudly. My head was buzzing slightly. Lil's hands fell away. 

"But we've got an early morning tomorrow, " Lil said. "You've got a shiftat eight, and I'm running into town for groceries. " She was lying, butshe was telling me that this wasn't her idea of a smart move. But myfaith was unshakeable. 

"Eight a. M. Shift? No problem -- I'll be right here when it starts. I'lljust grab a shower at the Contemporary in the morning and catch themonorail back in time to change. All right?"

Dan tried. "But Jules, we were going to grab some dinner at Cinderella'sRoyal Table, remember? I made reservations. "

"Aw, we can eat any time, " I said. "This is a hell of an opportunity. "

"It sure is, " Dan said, giving up. "Mind if I come along?"

He and Lil traded meaningful looks that I interpreted to mean, _If he'sgoing to be a nut, one of us really should stay with him_. I was pastcaring -- I was going to beard the lion in his den!

Tim was apparently oblivious to all of this. "Then it's settled! Let'sgo. "

#

On the walk to the Hall, Dan kept ringing my cochlea and I kept sendinghim straight to voicemail. All the while, I kept up a patter of small-talk with him and Tim. I was determined to make up for my debacle in theMansion with Tim, win him over. 

Debra's people were sitting around in the armchairs onstage, theanimatronic presidents stacked in neat piles in the wings. Debra wassprawled in Lincoln's armchair, her head cocked lazily, her legsextended before her. The Hall's normal smells of ozone and cleanlinesswere overridden by sweat and machine-oil, the stink of an ad-hoc pullingan all-nighter. The Hall took fifteen years to research and execute, anda couple of days to tear down. 

She was au-naturel, still wearing the face she'd been born with, albeitone that had been regenerated dozens of times after her deaths. It waspatrician, waxy, long, with a nose that was made for staring down. Shewas at least as old as I was, though she was only apparent 22. I got thesense that she picked this age because it was one that affordedboundless reserves of energy. 

She didn't deign to rise as I approached, but she did nod languorouslyat me. The other ad-hocs had been split into little clusters, hunchedover terminals. They all had the raccoon-eyed, sleep-deprived look offanatics, even Debra, who managed to look lazy and excitedsimultaneously. 

_Did you have me killed_? I wondered, staring at Debra. After all, she'dbeen killed dozens, if not hundreds of times. It might not be such a bigdeal for her. 

"Hi there, " I said, brightly. "Tim offered to show us around! You knowDan, right?"

Debra nodded at him. "Oh, sure. Dan and I are pals, right?"

Dan's poker face didn't twitch a muscle. "Hello, Debra, " he said. He'dbeen hanging out with them since Lil had briefed him on the peril to theMansion, trying to gather some intelligence for us to use. They knewwhat he was up to, of course, but Dan was a fairly charming guy and heworked like a mule, so they tolerated him. But it seemed like he'dviolated a boundary by accompanying me, as though the polite fictionthat he was more a part of Debra's ad-hoc than Lil's was shattered by mypresence. 

Tim said, "Can I show them the demo, Debra?"

Debra quirked an eyebrow, then said, "Sure, why not. You'll like this, guys. "

Tim hustled us backstage, where Lil and I used to sweat over theanimatronics and cop surreptitious feels. Everything had been tornloose, packed up, stacked. They hadn't wasted a moment -- they'd spent aweek tearing down a show that had run for more than a century. The scrimthat the projected portions of the show normally screened on was groundinto the floor, spotted with grime, footprints and oil. 

Tim showed me to a half-assembled backup terminal. Its housing was off, and any number of wireless keyboards, pointers and gloves lay strewnabout it. It had the look of a prototype. 

"This is it -- our uplink. So far, we've got a demo app running on it:Lincoln's old speech, along with the civil-war montage. Just switch onguest access and I'll core-dump it to you. It's wild. "

I pulled up my HUD and switched on guest access. Tim pointed a finger atthe terminal and my brain was suffused with the essence of Lincoln:every nuance of his speech, the painstakingly researched movement tics, his warts and beard and topcoat. It almost felt like I _was_ Lincoln, for a moment, and then it passed. But I could still taste the lingeringcoppery flavor of cannon-fire and chewing tobacco. 

I staggered backwards. My head swam with flash-baked sense-impressions, rich and detailed. I knew on the spot that Debra's Hall of thePresidents was going to be a hit. 

Dan took a shot off the uplink, too. Tim and I watched him as hisexpression shifted from skepticism to delight. Tim looked expectantly atme. 

"That's really fine, " I said. "Really, really fine. Moving. "

Tim blushed. "Thanks! I did the gestalt programming -- it's myspecialty. "

Debra spoke up from behind him -- she'd sauntered over while Dan wasgetting his jolt. "I got the idea in Beijing, when I was dying a lot. There's something wonderful about having memories implanted, like you'rereally working your brain. I love the synthetic clarity of it all. "

Tim sniffed. "Not synthetic at all, " he said, turning to me. "It's niceand soft, right?"

I sensed deep political shoals and was composing my reply when Debrasaid: "Tim keeps trying to make it all more impressionistic, lesscomputer-y. He's wrong, of course. We don't want to simulate theexperience of watching the show -- we want to _transcend it_. "

Tim nodded reluctantly. "Sure, transcend it. But the way we do that isby making the experience _human_, a mile in the presidents' shoes. Empathy-driven. What's the point of flash-baking a bunch of dry facts onsomeone's brain?"

========= CHAPTER 4 =========

One night in the Hall of Presidents convinced me of three things:

1. That Debra's people had had me killed, and screw their alibis, 2. That they would kill me again, when the time came for them to make aplay for the Haunted Mansion, 3. That our only hope for saving the Mansion was a preemptive strikeagainst them: we had to hit them hard, where it hurt. 

Dan and I had been treated to eight hours of insectile precision in theHall of Presidents, Debra's people working with effortless cooperationborn of the adversity they'd faced in Beijing. Debra moved from team toteam, making suggestions with body language as much as with words, leaving bursts of inspired activity in her wake. 

It was that precision that convinced me of point one. Any ad-hoc thistight could pull off anything if it advanced their agenda. Ad-hoc? Hell, call them what they were: an army. 

Point two came to me when I sampled the Lincoln build that Tim finishedat about three in the morning, after intensive consultation with Debra. The mark of a great ride is that it gets better the second time around, as the detail and flourishes start to impinge on your consciousness. TheMansion was full of little gimcracks and sly nods that snuck into yourexperience on each successive ride. 

Tim shuffled his feet nervously, bursting with barely restrained prideas I switched on public access. He dumped the app to my publicdirectory, and, gingerly, I executed it. 

God! God and Lincoln and cannon-fire and oratory and ploughs and mulesand greatcoats! It rolled over me, it punched through me, it crashedagainst the inside of my skull and rebounded. The first pass through, there had been a sense of order, of narrative, but this, this wasgestalt, the whole thing in one undifferentiated ball, filling me andspilling over. It was panicky for a moment, as the essence of Lincolnessseemed to threaten my own personality, and, just as it was about tooverwhelm me, it receded, leaving behind a rush of endorphin andadrenaline that made me want to jump. 

"Tim, " I gasped. "Tim! That was. . . " Words failed me. I wanted to hughim. What we could do for the Mansion with this! What elegance! Directlyimprinting the experience, without recourse to the stupid, blind eyes;the thick, deaf ears. 

Tim beamed and basked, and Debra nodded solemnly from her throne. "Youliked it?" Tim said. I nodded, and staggered back to the theatre seatwhere Dan slept, head thrown back, snores softly rattling in his throat. 

Incrementally, reason trickled back into my mind, and with it came ire. How dare they? The wonderful compromises of technology and expense thathad given us the Disney rides -- rides that had entertained the worldfor two centuries and more -- could never compete head to head with whatthey were working on. 

My hands knotted into fists in my lap. Why the fuck couldn't they dothis somewhere else? Why did they have to destroy everything I loved torealize this? They could build this tech anywhere -- they coulddistribute it online and people could access it from their living rooms!

But that would never do. Doing it here was better for the old Whuffie --they'd make over Disney World and hold it, a single ad-hoc where threehundred had flourished before, smoothly operating a park twice the sizeof Manhattan. 

I stood and stalked out of the theater, out into Liberty Square and thePark. It had cooled down without drying out, and there was a damp chillthat crawled up my back and made my breath stick in my throat. I turnedto contemplate the Hall of Presidents, staid and solid as it had beensince my boyhood and before, a monument to the Imagineers whoanticipated the Bitchun Society, inspired it. 

I called Dan, still snoring back in the theater, and woke him. Hegrunted unintelligibly in my cochlea. 

"They did it -- they killed me. " I knew they had, and I was glad. Itmade what I had to do next easier. 

"Oh, Jesus. They didn't kill you -- they offered their backups, remember? They couldn't have done it. "

"Bullshit!" I shouted into the empty night. "Bullshit! They did it, andthey fucked with their backups somehow. They must have. It's all tooneat and tidy. How else could they have gotten so far with the Hall sofast? They knew it was coming, they planned a disruption, and they movedin. Tell me that you think they just had these plans lying around andmoved on them when they could. "

Dan groaned, and I heard his joints popping. He must have beenstretching. The Park breathed around me, the sounds of maintenance crewsscurrying in the night. "I do believe that. Clearly, you don't. It's notthe first time we've disagreed. So now what?"

"Now we save the Mansion, " I said. "Now we fight back. "

"Oh, shit, " Dan said. 

I have to admit, there was a part of me that concurred. 

#

My opportunity came later that week. Debra's ad-hocs were showboating, announcing a special preview of the new Hall to the other ad-hocs thatworked in the Park. It was classic chutzpah, letting the key influencersin the Park in long before the bugs were hammered out. A smooth runwould garner the kind of impressed reaction that guaranteed continuedsupport while they finished up; a failed demo could doom them. Therewere plenty of people in the Park who had a sentimental attachment tothe Hall of Presidents, and whatever Debra's people came up with wouldhave to answer their longing. 

"I'm going to do it during the demo, " I told Dan, while I piloted therunabout from home to the castmember parking. I snuck a look at him togauge his reaction. He had his poker face on. 

"I'm not going to tell Lil, " I continued. "It's better that she doesn'tknow -- plausible deniability. "

"And me?" he said. "Don't I need plausible deniability?"

"No, " I said. "No, you don't. You're an outsider. You can make the casethat you were working on your own -- gone rogue. " I knew it wasn't fair. Dan was here to build up his Whuffie, and if he was implicated in mydirty scheme, he'd have to start over again. I knew it wasn't fair, butI didn't care. I knew that we were fighting for our own survival. "It'sgood versus evil, Dan. You don't want to be a post-person. You want tostay human. The rides are human. We each mediate them through our ownexperience. We're physically inside of them, and they talk to us throughour senses. What Debra's people are building -- it's hive-mind shit. Directly implanting thoughts! Jesus! It's not an experience, it'sbrainwashing! You gotta know that. " I was pleading, arguing with myselfas much as with him. 

I snuck another look at him as I sped along the Disney back-roads, linedwith sweaty Florida pines and immaculate purple signage. Dan was lookingthoughtful, the way he had back in our old days in Toronto. Some of mytension dissipated. He was thinking about it -- I'd gotten through tohim. 

"Jules, this isn't one of your better ideas. " My chest tightened, and hepatted my shoulder. He had the knack of putting me at my ease, even whenhe was telling me that I was an idiot. "Even if Debra was behind yourassassination -- and that's not a certainty, we both know that. Even ifthat's the case, we've got better means at our disposal. Improving theMansion, competing with her head to head, that's smart. Give it a littlewhile and we can come back at her, take over the Hall -- even thePirates, that'd really piss her off. Hell, if we can prove she wasbehind the assassination, we can chase her off right now. Sabotage isnot going to do you any good. You've got lots of other options. "

"But none of them are fast enough, and none of them are emotionallysatisfying. This way has some goddamn _balls_. "

We reached castmember parking, I swung the runabout into a slot andstalked out before it had a chance to extrude its recharger cock. Iheard Dan's door slam behind me and knew that he was following behind. 

We took to the utilidors grimly. I walked past the cameras, knowing thatmy image was being archived, my presence logged. I'd picked the timingof my raid carefully: by arriving at high noon, I was sticking to mytraditional pattern for watching hot-weather crowd dynamics. I'd made apoint of visiting twice during the previous week at this time, and ofdawdling in the commissary before heading topside. The delay between myarrival in the runabout and my showing up at the Mansion would not bediscrepant. 

Dan dogged my heels as I swung towards the commissary, and then huggedthe wall, in the camera's blindspot. Back in my early days in the Park, when I was courting Lil, she showed me the A-Vac, the old pneumaticwaste-disposal system, decommissioned in the 20s. The kids who grew upin the Park had been notorious explorers of the tubes, which stillwhiffed faintly of the garbage bags they'd once whisked at 60 mph to thedump on the property's outskirts, but for a brave, limber kid, the tubeswere a subterranean wonderland to explore when the hypermediatedexperiences of the Park lost their luster. 

I snarled a grin and popped open the service entrance. "If they hadn'tkilled me and forced me to switch to a new body, I probably wouldn't beflexible enough to fit in, " I hissed at Dan. "Ironic, huh?"

I clambered inside without waiting for a reply, and started inching myway under the Hall of Presidents. 

#

My plan had covered every conceivable detail, except one, which didn'toccur to me until I was forty minutes into the pneumatic tube, arms heldbefore me and legs angled back like a swimmer's. 

How was I going to reach into my pockets?

Specifically, how was I going to retrieve my HERF gun from my backpants-pocket, when I couldn't even bend my elbows? The HERF gun was thecrux of the plan: a High Energy Radio Frequency generator with adirectional, focused beam that would punch up through the floor of theHall of Presidents and fuse every goddamn scrap of unshieldedelectronics on the premises. I'd gotten the germ of the idea duringTim's first demo, when I'd seen all of his prototypes spread outbackstage, cases off, ready to be tinkered with. Unshielded. 

"Dan, " I said, my voice oddly muffled by the tube's walls. 

"Yeah?" he said. He'd been silent during the journey, the sound of hispainful, elbow-dragging progress through the lightless tube my onlyindicator of his presence. 

"Can you reach my back pocket?"

"Oh, shit, " he said. 

"Goddamn it, " I said, "keep the fucking editorial to yourself. Can youreach it or not?"

I heard him grunt as he pulled himself up in the tube, then felt hishand groping up my calf. Soon, his chest was crushing my calves into thetube's floor and his hand was pawing around my ass. 

"I can reach it, " he said. I could tell from his tone that he wasn't toohappy about my snapping at him, but I was too wrapped up to consider anapology, despite what must be happening to my Whuffie as Dan did hisslow burn. 

He fumbled the gun -- a narrow cylinder as long as my palm -- out of mypocket. "Now what?" he said. 

"Can you pass it up?" I asked. 

Dan crawled higher, overtop of me, but stuck fast when his ribcage metmy glutes. "I can't get any further, " he said. 

"Fine, " I said. "You'll have to fire it, then. " I held my breath. Wouldhe do it? It was one thing to be my accomplice, another to be the authorof the destruction. 

"Aw, Jules, " he said. 

"A simple yes or no, Dan. That's all I want to hear from you. " I wasboiling with anger -- at myself, at Dan, at Debra, at the whole goddamnthing. 

"Fine, " he said. 

"Good. Dial it up to max dispersion and point it straight up. "

I heard him release the catch, felt a staticky crackle in the air, andthen it was done. The gun was a one-shot, something I'd confiscated froma mischievous guest a decade before, when they'd had a brief vogue. 

"Hang on to it, " I said. I had no intention of leaving such a damningbit of evidence behind. I resumed my bellycrawl forward to the nextservice hatch, near the parking lot, where I'd stashed an identicalchange of clothes for both of us. 

#

We made it back just as the demo was getting underway. Debra's ad-hocswere ranged around the mezzanine inside the Hall of Presidents, acollection of influential castmembers from other ad-hocs filling thepre-show area to capacity. 

Dan and I filed in just as Tim was stringing the velvet rope up behindthe crowd. He gave me a genuine smile and shook my hand, and I smiledback, full of good feelings now that I knew that he was going down inflames. I found Lil and slipped my hand into hers as we filed into theauditorium, which had the new-car smell of rug shampoo and freshelectronics. 

We took our seats and I bounced my leg nervously, compulsively, whileDebra, dressed in Lincoln's coat and stovepipe, delivered a shortspeech. There was some kind of broadcast rig mounted over the stage now, something to allow them to beam us all their app in one humongous burst. 

Debra finished up and stepped off the stage to a polite round ofapplause, and they started the demo. 

Nothing happened. I tried to keep the shit-eating grin off my face asnothing happened. No tone in my cochlea indicating a new file in mypublic directory, no rush of sensation, nothing. I turned to Lil to makesome snotty remark, but her eyes were closed, her mouth lolling open, her breath coming in short huffs. Down the row, every castmember was inthe same attitude of deep, mind-blown concentration. I pulled up adiagnostic HUD. 

Nothing. No diagnostics. No HUD. I cold-rebooted. 

Nothing. 

I was offline. 

#

Offline, I filed out of the Hall of Presidents. Offline, I took Lil'shand and walked to the Liberty Belle load-zone, our spot for privateconversations. Offline, I bummed a cigarette from her. 

Lil was upset -- even through my bemused, offline haze, I could tellthat. Tears pricked her eyes. 

"Why didn't you tell me?" she said, after a hard moment's staring intothe moonlight reflecting off the river. 

"Tell you?" I said, dumbly. 

"They're really good. They're better than good. They're better than us. Oh, God. "

Offline, I couldn't find stats or signals to help me discuss the matter. Offline, I tried it without help. "I don't think so. I don't thinkthey've got soul, I don't think they've got history, I don't thinkthey've got any kind of connection to the past. The world grew up in theDisneys -- they visit this place for continuity as much as forentertainment. We provide that. " I'm offline, and they're not -- whatthe hell happened?

"It'll be okay, Lil. There's nothing in that place that's better thanus. Different and new, but not better. You know that -- you've spentmore time in the Mansion than anyone, you know how much refinement, howmuch work there is in there. How can something they whipped up in acouple weeks possibly be better that this thing we've been maintainingfor all these years?"

She ground the back of her sleeve against her eyes and smiled. "Sorry, "she said. Her nose was red, her eyes puffy, her freckles livid over theflush of her cheeks. "Sorry -- it's just shocking. Maybe you're right. And even if you're not -- hey, that's the whole point of a meritocracy, right? The best stuff survives, everything else gets supplanted. 

"Oh, shit, I hate how I look when I cry, " she said. "Let's gocongratulate them. "

As I took her hand, I was obscurely pleased with myself for havingimproved her mood without artificial assistance. 

#

Dan was nowhere to be seen as Lil and I mounted the stage at the Hall, where Debra's ad-hocs and a knot of well-wishers were celebrating bypassing a rock around. Debra had lost the tailcoat and hat, and was inan extreme state of relaxation, arms around the shoulders of two of hercronies, pipe between her teeth. 

She grinned around the pipe as Lil and I stumbled through some insincerecompliments, nodded, and toked heavily while Tim applied a torch to thebowl. 

"Thanks, " she said, laconically. "It was a team effort. " She hugged hercronies to her, almost knocking their heads together. 

Lil said, "What's your timeline, then?"

Debra started unreeling a long spiel about critical paths, milestones, requirements meetings, and I tuned her out. Ad-hocs were crazy for thatprocess stuff. I stared at my feet, at the floorboards, and realizedthat they weren't floorboards at all, but faux-finish painted over acopper mesh -- a Faraday cage. That's why the HERF gun hadn't doneanything; that's why they'd been so casual about working with theshielding off their computers. With my eye, I followed the coppershielding around the entire stage and up the walls, where it disappearedinto the ceiling. Once again, I was struck by the evolvedness of Debra'sad-hocs, how their trial by fire in China had armored them against thekind of bush-league jiggery-pokery that the fuzzy bunnies in Florida --myself included -- came up with. 

For instance, I didn't think there was a single castmember in the Parkoutside of Deb's clique with the stones to stage an assassination. OnceI'd made that leap, I realized that it was only a matter of time untilthey staged another one -- and another, and another. Whatever they couldget away with. 

Debra's spiel finally wound down and Lil and I headed away. I stopped infront of the backup terminal in the gateway between Liberty Square andFantasyland. "When was the last time you backed up?" I asked her. Ifthey could go after me, they might go after any of us. 

"Yesterday, " she said. She exuded bone-weariness at me, looking morelike an overmediated guest than a tireless castmember. 

"Let's run another backup, huh? We should really back up at night and atlunchtime -- with things the way they are, we can't afford to lose anafternoon's work, much less a week's. "

Lil rolled her eyes. I knew better than to argue with her when she wastired, but this was too crucial to set aside for petulance. "You canback up that often if you want to, Julius, but don't tell me how to livemy life, okay?"

"Come on, Lil -- it only takes a minute, and it'd make me feel a lotbetter. Please?" I hated the whine in my voice. 

"No, Julius. No. Let's go home and get some sleep. I want to do somework on new merch for the Mansion -- some collectible stuff, maybe. "

"For Christ's sake, is it really so much to ask? Fine. Wait while I backup, then, all right?"

Lil groaned and glared at me. 

I approached the terminal and cued a backup. Nothing happened. Oh, yeah, right, I was offline. A cool sweat broke out all over my new body. 

#

Lil grabbed the couch as soon as we got in, mumbling something aboutwanting to work on some revised merch ideas she'd had. I glared at heras she subvocalized and air-typed in the corner, shut away from me. Ihadn't told her that I was offline yet -- it just seemed likeinsignificant personal bitching relative to the crises she was copingwith. 

Besides, I'd been knocked offline before, though not in fifty years, andoften as not the system righted itself after a good night's sleep. Icould visit the doctor in the morning if things were still screwy. 

So I crawled into bed, and when my bladder woke me in the night, I hadto go into the kitchen to consult our old starburst clock to get thetime. It was 3 a. M. , and when the hell had we expunged the house of alltimepieces, anyway?

Lil was sacked out on the couch, and complained feebly when I tried torouse her, so I covered her with a blanket and went back to bed, alone. 

I woke disoriented and crabby, without my customary morning jolt ofendorphin. Vivid dreams of death and destruction slipped away as I satup. I preferred to let my subconscious do its own thing, so I'd long agoprogrammed my systems to keep me asleep during REM cycles except inemergencies. The dream left a foul taste in my mind as I staggered intothe kitchen, where Lil was fixing coffee. 

"Why didn't you wake me up last night? I'm one big ache from sleeping onthe couch, " Lil said as I stumbled in. 

She had the perky, jaunty quality of someone who could instruct hernervous system to manufacture endorphin and adrenaline at will. I feltlike punching the wall. 

"You wouldn't get up, " I said, and slopped coffee in the generaldirection of a mug, then scalded my tongue with it. 

"And why are you up so late? I was hoping you would cover a shift for me-- the merch ideas are really coming together and I wanted to hit theImagineering shop and try some prototyping. "

"Can't. " I foraged a slice of bread with cheese and noticed a crumbyplate in the sink. Dan had already eaten and gone, apparently. 

"Really?" she said, and my blood started to boil in earnest. I slammedDan's plate into the dishwasher and shoved bread into my maw. 

"Yes. Really. It's your shift -- fucking work it or call in sick. "

Lil reeled. Normally, I was the soul of sweetness in the morning, when Iwas hormonally enhanced, anyway. "What's wrong, honey?" she said, goinginto helpful castmember mode. Now I wanted to hit something besides thewall. 

"Just leave me alone, all right? Go fiddle with fucking merch. I've gotreal work to do -- in case you haven't noticed, Debra's about to eat youand your little band of plucky adventurers and pick her teeth with thebones. For God's sake, Lil, don't you ever get fucking angry aboutanything? Don't you have any goddamned passion?"

Lil whitened and I felt a sinking feeling in my gut. It was the worstthing I could possibly have said. 

Lil and I met three years before, at a barbecue that some friends of herparents threw, a kind of castmember mixer. She'd been just 19 --apparent and real -- and had a bubbly, flirty vibe that made me dismissher, at first, as just another airhead castmember. 

Her parents -- Tom and Rita -- on the other hand, were fascinatingpeople, members of the original ad-hoc that had seized power in WaltDisney World, wresting control from a gang of wealthy formershareholders who'd been operating it as their private preserve. Rita wasapparent 20 or so, but she radiated a maturity and a fiery devotion tothe Park that threw her daughter's superficiality into sharp relief. 

They throbbed with Whuffie, Whuffie beyond measure, beyond use. In aworld where even a zeroed-out Whuffie loser could eat, sleep, travel andaccess the net without hassle, their wealth was more than sufficient torepeatedly access the piffling few scarce things left on earth over andover. 

The conversation turned to the first day, when she and her pals had useda cutting torch on the turnstiles and poured in, wearing homemadecostumes and name tags. They infiltrated the shops, the control centers, the rides, first by the hundred, then, as the hot July day ticked by, bythe thousand. The shareholders' lackeys -- who worked the Park for thechance to be a part of the magic, even if they had no control over themanagement decisions -- put up a token resistance. Before the day wasout, though, the majority had thrown in their lots with the raiders, handing over security codes and pitching in. 

"But we knew the shareholders wouldn't give in as easy as that, " Lil'smother said, sipping her lemonade. "We kept the Park running 24/7 forthe next two weeks, never giving the shareholders a chance to fight backwithout doing it in front of the guests. We'd prearranged with a coupleof airline ad-hocs to add extra routes to Orlando and the guests camepouring in. " She smiled, remembering the moment, and her features inrepose were Lil's almost identically. It was only when she was talkingthat her face changed, muscles tugging it into an expression decadesolder than the face that bore it. 

"I spent most of the time running the merch stand at Madame Leota'soutside the Mansion, gladhanding the guests while hissing nasties backand forth with the shareholders who kept trying to shove me out. I sleptin a sleeping bag on the floor of the utilidor, with a couple dozenothers, in three hour shifts. That was when I met this asshole" -- shechucked her husband on the shoulder -- "he'd gotten the wrong sleepingbag by mistake and wouldn't budge when I came down to crash. I justcrawled in next to him and the rest, as they say, is history. "

Lil rolled her eyes and made gagging noises. "Jesus, Rita, no one needsto hear about that part of it. "

Tom patted her arm. "Lil, you're an adult -- if you can't stomachhearing about your parents' courtship, you can either sit somewhere elseor grin and bear it. But you don't get to dictate the topic ofconversation. "

Lil gave us adults a very youthful glare and flounced off. Rita shookher head at Lil's departing backside. "There's not much fire in thatgeneration, " she said. "Not a lot of passion. It's our fault -- wethought that Disney World would be the best place to raise a child inthe Bitchun Society. Maybe it was, but. . . " She trailed off and rubbedher palms on her thighs, a gesture I'd come to know in Lil, by and by. "I guess there aren't enough challenges for them these days. They're toocooperative. " She laughed and her husband took her hand. 

"We sound like our parents, " Tom said. "'When we were growing up, wedidn't have any of this newfangled life-extension stuff -- we took ourchances with the cave bears and the dinosaurs!'" Tom wore himself older, apparent 50, with graying sidewalls and crinkled smile-lines, the betterto present a non-threatening air of authority to the guests. It was atruism among the first-gen ad-hocs that women castmembers should wearthemselves young, men old. "We're just a couple of Bitchunfundamentalists, I guess. "

Lil called over from a nearby conversation: "Are they telling you what apack of milksops we are, Julius? When you get tired of that, why don'tyou come over here and have a smoke?" I noticed that she and her cohortwere passing a crack pipe. 

"What's the use?" Lil's mother sighed. 

"Oh, I don't know that it's as bad as all that, " I said, virtually myfirst words of the afternoon. I was painfully conscious that I was onlythere by courtesy, just one of the legion of hopefuls who flocked toOrlando every year, aspiring to a place among the ruling cliques. "They're passionate about maintaining the Park, that's for sure. I madethe mistake of lifting a queue-gate at the Jungleboat Cruise last weekand I got a very earnest lecture about the smooth functioning of thePark from a castmember who couldn't have been more than 18. I think thatthey don't have the passion for creating Bitchunry that we have -- theydon't need it -- but they've got plenty of drive to maintain it. "

Lil's mother gave me a long, considering look that I didn't know what tomake of. I couldn't tell if I had offended her or what. 

"I mean, you can't be a revolutionary after the revolution, can you?Didn't we all struggle so that kids like Lil wouldn't have to?"

"Funny you should say that, " Tom said. He had the same considering lookon his face. "Just yesterday we were talking about the very same thing. We were talking --" he drew a breath and looked askance at his wife, whonodded -- "about deadheading. For a while, anyway. See if things changedmuch in fifty or a hundred years. "

I felt a kind of shameful disappointment. Why was I wasting my timeschmoozing with these two, when they wouldn't be around when the timecame to vote me in? I banished the thought as quickly as it came -- Iwas talking to them because they were nice people. Not everyconversation had to be strategically important. 

"Really? Deadheading. " I remember that I thought of Dan then, about hisviews on the cowardice of deadheading, on the bravery of ending it whenyou found yourself obsolete. He'd comforted me once, when my last livingrelative, my uncle, opted to go to sleep for three thousand years. Myuncle had been born pre-Bitchun, and had never quite gotten the hang ofit. Still, he was my link to my family, to my first adulthood and myonly childhood. Dan had taken me to Gananoque and we'd spent the daybounding around the countryside on seven-league boots, sailing high overthe lakes of the Thousand Islands and the crazy fiery carpet of autumnleaves. We topped off the day at a dairy commune he knew where theystill made cheese from cow's milk and there'd been a thousand smells andbottles of strong cider and a girl whose name I'd long since forgottenbut whose exuberant laugh I'd remember forever. And it wasn't soimportant, then, my uncle going to sleep for three milliennia, becausewhatever happened, there were the leaves and the lakes and the crispsunset the color of blood and the girl's laugh. 

"Have you talked to Lil about it?"

Rita shook her head. "It's just a thought, really. We don't want toworry her. She's not good with hard decisions -- it's her generation. "

They changed the subject not long thereafter, and I sensed discomfort, knew that they had told me too much, more than they'd intended. Idrifted off and found Lil and her young pals, and we toked a little andcuddled a little. 

Within a month, I was working at the Haunted Mansion, Tom and Rita wereinvested in Canopic jars in Kissimee with instructions not to be wokenuntil their newsbots grabbed sufficient interesting material to make itworth their while, and Lil and I were a hot item. 

Lil didn't deal well with her parents' decision to deadhead. For her, itwas a slap in the face, a reproach to her and her generation oftwittering Polyannic castmembers. 

For God's sake, Lil, don't you ever get fucking angry about anything?Don't you have any goddamned passion?

The words were out of my mouth before I knew I was saying them, and Lil, 15 percent of my age, young enough to be my great-granddaughter; Lil, mylover and best friend and sponsor to the Liberty Square ad-hocracy; Lilturned white as a sheet, turned on her heel and walked out of thekitchen. She got in her runabout and went to the Park to take her shift. 

I went back to bed and stared at the ceiling fan as it made its lazyturns, and felt like shit. 

========= CHAPTER 5 =========

When I finally returned to the Park, 36 hours had passed and Lil had notcome back to the house. If she'd tried to call, she would've gotten myvoicemail -- I had no way of answering my phone. As it turned out, shehadn't been trying to reach me at all. 

I'd spent the time alternately moping, drinking, and plotting terrible, irrational vengeance on Debra for killing me, destroying myrelationship, taking away my beloved (in hindsight, anyway) Hall ofPresidents and threatening the Mansion. Even in my addled state, I knewthat this was pretty unproductive, and I kept promising that I would cutit out, take a shower and some sober-ups, and get to work at theMansion. 

I was working up the energy to do just that when Dan came in. 

"Jesus, " he said, shocked. I guess I was a bit of a mess, sprawled onthe sofa in my underwear, all gamy and baggy and bloodshot. 

"Hey, Dan. How's it goin'?"

He gave me one of his patented wry looks and I felt the same weirdreversal of roles that we'd undergone at the U of T, when he had becomethe native, and I had become the interloper. He was the together onewith the wry looks and I was the pathetic seeker who'd burned all hisreputation capital. Out of habit, I checked my Whuffie, and a momentlater I stopped being startled by its low score and was instead shockedby the fact that I could check it at all. I was back online!

"Now, what do you know about that?" I said, staring at my dismalWhuffie. 

"What?" he said. 

I called his cochlea. "My systems are back online, " I subvocalized. 

He started. "You were offline?"

I jumped up from the couch and did a little happy underwear dance. "I_was_, but I'm not _now_. " I felt better than I had in days, ready tobeat the world -- or at least Debra. 

"Let me take a shower, then let's get to the Imagineering labs. I've gota pretty kickass idea. "

#

The idea, as I explained it in the runabout, was a preemptive rehab ofthe Mansion. Sabotaging the Hall had been a nasty, stupid idea, and I'dgotten what I deserved for it. The whole point of the Bitchun Societywas to be more reputable than the next ad-hoc, to succeed on merit, nottrickery, despite assassinations and the like. 

So a rehab it would be. 

"Back in the early days of the Disneyland Mansion, in California, " Iexplained, "Walt had a guy in a suit of armor just past the first DoomBuggy curve, he'd leap out and scare the hell out of the guests as theywent by. It didn't last long, of course. The poor bastard kept gettingpunched out by startled guests, and besides, the armor wasn't toocomfortable for long shifts. "

Dan chuckled appreciatively. The Bitchun Society had all but done awaywith any sort of dull, repetitious labor, and what remained -- tendingbar, mopping toilets -- commanded Whuffie aplenty and a life of leisurein your off-hours. 

"But that guy in the suit of armor, he could _improvise_. You'd get aslightly different show every time. It's like the castmembers who spielon the Jungleboat Cruise. They've each got their own patter, their ownjokes, and even though the animatronics aren't so hot, it makes the showworth seeing. "

"You're going to fill the Mansion with castmembers in armor?" Dan asked, shaking his head. 

I waved away his objections, causing the runabout to swerve, terrifyinga pack of guests who were taking a ride on rented bikes around theproperty. "No, " I said, flapping a hand apologetically at the white-faced guests. "Not at all. But what if all of the animatronics had humanoperators -- telecontrollers, working with waldoes? We'll let theminteract with the guests, talk with them, scare them. . . We'll get ridof the existing animatronics, replace 'em with full-mobility robots, then cast the parts over the Net. Think of the Whuffie! You could put, say, a thousand operators online at once, ten shifts per day, each ofthem caught up in our Mansion. . . We'll give out awards for outstandingperformances, the shifts'll be based on popular vote. In effect, we'llbe adding another ten thousand guests to the Mansion's throughput everyday, only these guests will be honorary castmembers. "

"That's pretty good, " Dan said. "Very Bitchun. Debra may have AI andflash-baking, but you'll have human interaction, courtesy of the biggestMansion-fans in the world --"

"And those are the very fans Debra'll have to win over to make a playfor the Mansion. Very elegant, huh?"

#

The first order of business was to call Lil, patch things up, and pitchthe idea to her. The only problem was, my cochlea was offline again. Mymood started to sour, and I had Dan call her instead. 

We met her up at Imagineering, a massive complex of prefab aluminumbuildings painted Go-Away Green that had thronged with mad inventorssince the Bitchun Society had come to Walt Disney World. The ad-hocs whohad built an Imagineering department in Florida and now ran the thingwere the least political in the Park, classic labcoat-and-clipboardtypes who would work for anyone so long as the ideas were cool. Notcaring about Whuffie meant that they accumulated it in plenty on boththe left and right hands. 

Lil was working with Suneep, AKA the Merch Miracle. He could design, prototype and produce a souvenir faster than anyone -- shirts, sculptures, pens, toys, housewares, he was the king. They werecollaborating on their HUDs, facing each other across a lab-bench in themiddle of a lab as big as a basketball court, cluttered with logomarkedtchotchkes and gabbling away while their eyes danced over invisiblescreens. 

Dan reflexively joined the collaborative space as he entered the lab, leaving me the only one out on the joke. Dan was clearly delighted bywhat he saw. 

I nudged him with an elbow. "Make a hardcopy, " I hissed. 

Instead of pitying me, he just airtyped a few commands and pages startedto roll out of a printer in the lab's corner. Anyone else would havemade a big deal out of it, but he just brought me into the discussion. 

If I needed proof that Lil and I were meant for each other, the designsshe and Suneep had come up with were more than enough. She'd beenthinking just the way I had -- souvenirs that stressed the human scaleof the Mansion. There were miniature animatronics of the HitchhikingGhosts in a black-light box, their skeletal robotics visible throughtheir layers of plastic clothing; action figures that communicated byIR, so that placing one in proximity with another would unlock itsMansion-inspired behaviors -- the raven cawed, Mme. Leota's headincanted, the singing busts sang. She'd worked up some formal attirebased on the castmember costume, cut in this year's stylish lines. 

It was good merch, is what I'm trying to say. In my mind's eye, I wasseeing the relaunch of the Mansion in six months, filled with roboticavatars of Mansion-nuts the world 'round, Mme. Leota's gift cart piledhigh with brilliant swag, strolling human players ad-libbing with theguests in the queue area. . . 

Lil looked up from her mediated state and glared at me as I pored overthe hardcopy, nodding enthusiastically. 

"Passionate enough for you?" she snapped. 

I felt a flush creeping into face, my ears. It was somewhere betweenanger and shame, and I reminded myself that I was more than a centuryolder than her, and it was my responsibility to be mature. Also, I'dstarted the fight. 

"This is fucking fantastic, Lil, " I said. Her look didn't soften. "Really choice stuff. I had a great idea --" I ran it down for her, theavatars, the robots, the rehab. She stopped glaring, started takingnotes, smiling, showing me her dimples, her slanted eyes crinkling atthe corners. 

"This isn't easy, " she said, finally. Suneep, who'd been politelypretending not to listen in, nodded involuntarily. Dan, too. 

"I know that, " I said. The flush burned hotter. "But that's the point --what Debra does isn't easy either. It's risky, dangerous. It made herand her ad-hoc better -- it made them sharper. " _Sharper than us, that'sfor sure_. "They can make decisions like this fast, and execute themjust as quickly. We need to be able to do that, too. "

Was I really advocating being more like Debra? The words'd just poppedout, but I saw that I'd been right -- we'd have to beat Debra at her owngame, out-evolve her ad-hocs. 

"I understand what you're saying, " Lil said. I could tell she was upset-- she'd reverted to castmemberspeak. "It's a very good idea. I thinkthat we stand a good chance of making it happen if we approach the groupand put it to them, after doing the research, building the plans, layingout the critical path, and privately soliciting feedback from some ofthem. "

I felt like I was swimming in molasses. At the rate that the LibertySquare ad-hoc moved, we'd be holding formal requirements reviews whileDebra's people tore down the Mansion around us. So I tried a differenttactic. 

"Suneep, you've been involved in some rehabs, right?"

Suneep nodded slowly, with a cautious expression, a nonpolitical animalbeing drawn into a political discussion. 

"Okay, so tell me, if we came to you with this plan and asked you topull together a production schedule -- one that didn't have any review, just take the idea and run with it -- and then pull it off, how longwould it take you to execute it?"

Lil smiled primly. She'd dealt with Imagineering before. 

"About five years, " he said, almost instantly. 

"Five years?" I squawked. "Why five years? Debra's people overhauled theHall in a month!"

"Oh, wait, " he said. "No review at all?"

"No review. Just come up with the best way you can to do this, and doit. And we can provide you with unlimited, skilled labor, three shiftsaround the clock. "

He rolled his eyes back and ticked off days on his fingers whilemuttering under his breath. He was a tall, thin man with a shock ofcurly dark hair that he smoothed unconsciously with surprisingly stubbyfingers while he thought. 

"About eight weeks, " he said. "Barring accidents, assuming off-the-shelfparts, unlimited labor, capable management, material availability. . . "He trailed off again, and his short fingers waggled as he pulled up aHUD and started making a list. 

"Wait, " Lil said, alarmed. "How do you get from five years to eightweeks?"

Now it was my turn to smirk. I'd seen how Imagineering worked when theywere on their own, building prototypes and conceptual mockups -- I knewthat the real bottleneck was the constant review and revisions, theever-fluctuating groupmind consensus of the ad-hoc that commissionedtheir work. 

Suneep looked sheepish. "Well, if all I have to do is satisfy myselfthat my plans are good and my buildings won't fall down, I can make ithappen very fast. Of course, my plans aren't perfect. Sometimes, I'll behalfway through a project when someone suggests a new flourish orapproach that makes the whole thing immeasurably better. Then it's backto the drawing board. . . So I stay at the drawing board for a long timeat the start, get feedback from other Imagineers, from the ad-hocs, fromfocus groups and the Net. Then we do reviews at every stage ofconstruction, check to see if anyone has had a great idea we haven'tthought of and incorporate it, sometimes rolling back the work. 

"It's slow, but it works. "

Lil was flustered. "But if you can do a complete revision in eightweeks, why not just finish it, then plan another revision, do _that_ onein eight weeks, and so on? Why take five years before anyone can ridethe thing?"

"Because that's how it's done, " I said to Lil. "But that's not how it_has_ to be done. That's how we'll save the Mansion. "

I felt the surety inside of me, the certain knowledge that I was right. Ad-hocracy was a great thing, a Bitchun thing, but the organizationneeded to turn on a dime -- that would be even _more_ Bitchun. 

"Lil, " I said, looking into her eyes, trying to burn my POV into her. "We have to do this. It's our only chance. We'll recruit hundreds tocome to Florida and work on the rehab. We'll give every Mansion nut onthe planet a shot at joining up, then we'll recruit them again to workat it, to run the telepresence rigs. We'll get buy-in from the biggestsuper-recommenders in the world, and we'll build something better andfaster than any ad-hoc ever has, without abandoning the originalImagineers' vision. It will be unspeakably Bitchun. "

Lil dropped her eyes and it was her turn to flush. She paced the floor, hands swinging at her sides. I could tell that she was still angry withme, but excited and scared and yes, passionate. 

"It's not up to me, you know, " she said at length, still pacing. Dan andI exchanged wicked grins. She was in. 

"I know, " I said. But it was, almost -- she was a real opinion-leader inthe Liberty Square ad-hoc, someone who knew the systems back and forth, someone who made good, reasonable decisions and kept her head in acrisis. Not a hothead. Not prone to taking radical switchbacks. Thisplan would burn up that reputation and the Whuffie that accompanied it, in short order, but by the time that happened, she'd have plenty ofWhuffie with the new, thousands-strong ad-hoc. 

"I mean, I can't guarantee anything. I'd like to study the plans thatImagineering comes through with, do some walk-throughs --"

I started to object, to remind her that speed was of the essence, butshe beat me to it. 

"But I won't. We have to move fast. I'm in. "

She didn't come into my arms, didn't kiss me and tell me everything wasforgiven, but she bought in, and that was enough. 

#

My systems came back online sometime that day, and I hardly noticed, Iwas so preoccupied with the new Mansion. Holy shit, was it everaudacious: since the first Mansion opened in California in 1969, no onehad ever had the guts to seriously fuxor with it. Oh, sure, the Parisversion, Phantom Manor, had a slightly different storyline, but it wasjust a minor bit of tweakage to satisfy the European market at the time. No one wanted to screw up the legend. 

What the hell made the Mansion so cool, anyway? I'd been to Disney Worldany number of times as a guest before I settled in, and truth be told, it had never been my absolute favorite. 

But when I returned to Disney World, live and in person, freshly boredstupid by the three-hour liveheaded flight from Toronto, I'd foundmyself crowd-driven to it. 

I'm a terrible, terrible person to visit theme-parks with. Since I was apunk kid snaking my way through crowded subway platforms, eeling intothe only seat on a packed car, I'd been obsessed with Beating The Crowd. 

In the early days of the Bitchun Society, I'd known a blackjack player, a compulsive counter of cards, an idiot savant of odds. He was a pudgy, unassuming engineer, the moderately successful founder of a moderatelysuccessful high-tech startup that had done something arcane withsoftware agents. While he was only moderately successful, he wasfabulously wealthy: he'd never raised a cent of financing for hiscompany, and had owned it outright when he finally sold it for a bathtubfull of money. His secret was the green felt tables of Vegas, where he'dpilgrim off to every time his bank balance dropped, there to count themonkey-cards and calculate the odds and Beat The House. 

Long after his software company was sold, long after he'd made his nut, he was dressing up in silly disguises and hitting the tables, grindingout hand after hand of twenty-one, for the sheer satisfaction of BeatingThe House. For him, it was pure brain-reward, a jolt of happy-juiceevery time the dealer busted and every time he doubled down on adeckfull of face cards. 

Though I'd never bought so much as a lottery ticket, I immediately gothis compulsion: for me, it was Beating The Crowd, finding the path ofleast resistance, filling the gaps, guessing the short queue, dodgingthe traffic, changing lanes with a whisper to spare -- moving withprecision and grace and, above all, _expedience_. 

On that fateful return, I checked into the Fort Wilderness Campground, pitched my tent, and fairly ran to the ferry docks to catch a barge overto the Main Gate. 

Crowds were light until I got right up to Main Gate and the ticketingqueues. Suppressing an initial instinct to dash for the farthest one, beating my ferrymates to what rule-of-thumb said would have the shortestwait, I stepped back and did a quick visual survey of the twenty kiosksand evaluated the queued-up huddle in front of each. Pre-Bitchun, I'dhave been primarily interested in their ages, but that is less and lessa measure of anything other than outlook, so instead I carefullyexamined their queuing styles, their dress, and more than anything, their burdens. 

You can tell more about someone's ability to efficiently negotiate thecomplexities of a queue through what they carry than through any othermeans -- if only more people realized it. The classic, of course, is theunladen citizen, a person naked of even a modest shoulderbag ormarsupial pocket. To the layperson, such a specimen might be thought ofas a sure bet for a fast transaction, but I'd done an informal study andcome to the conclusion that these brave iconoclasts are often theflightiest of the lot, left smiling with bovine mystification, pattingdown their pockets in a fruitless search for a writing implement, apiece of ID, a keycard, a rabbit's foot, a rosary, a tuna sandwich. 

No, for my money, I'll take what I call the Road Worrier anytime. Such aperson is apt to be carefully slung with four or five carriers of onedescription or another, from bulging cargo pockets to clever military-grade strap-on pouches with biometrically keyed closures. The thing towatch for is the ergonomic consideration given to these conveyances: dothey balance, are they slung for minimum interference and maximum easeof access? Someone who's given that much consideration to their gear islikely spending their time in line determining which bits and piecesthey'll need when they reach its headwaters and is holding them at readyfor fastest-possible processing. 

This is a tricky call, since there are lookalike pretenders, gear-pigswho pack _everything_ because they lack the organizational smarts tofigure out what they should pack -- they're just as apt to be burdenedwith bags and pockets and pouches, but the telltale is the efficiency ofthat slinging. These pack mules will sag beneath their loads, jugglingthis and that while pushing overloose straps up on their shoulders. 

I spied a queue that was made up of a group of Road Worriers, a queuethat was slightly longer than the others, but I joined it and ticcednervously as I watched my progress relative to the other spots Icould've chosen. I was borne out, a positive omen for a wait-free World, and I was sauntering down Main Street, USA long before my ferrymates. 

Returning to Walt Disney World was a homecoming for me. My parents hadbrought me the first time when I was all of ten, just as the firstinklings of the Bitchun society were trickling into everyone'sconsciousness: the death of scarcity, the death of death, the struggleto rejig an economy that had grown up focused on nothing but scarcityand death. My memories of the trip are dim but warm, the balmy Floridaclimate and a sea of smiling faces punctuated by magical, darkenedmoments riding in OmniMover cars, past diorama after diorama. 

I went again when I graduated high school and was amazed by the richnessof detail, the grandiosity and grandeur of it all. I spent a week therestunned bovine, grinning and wandering from corner to corner. Someday, Iknew, I'd come to live there. 

The Park became a touchstone for me, a constant in a world whereeverything changed. Again and again, I came back to the Park, groundingmyself, communing with all the people I'd been. 

That day I bopped from land to land, ride to ride, seeking out the shortlines, the eye of the hurricane that crowded the Park to capacity. I'dtake high ground, standing on a bench or hopping up on a fence, and do avisual reccy of all the queues in sight, try to spot prevailing currentsin the flow of the crowd, generally having a high old obsessive time. Truth be told, I probably spent as much time looking for walk-ins as Iwould've spent lining up like a good little sheep, but I had more funand got more exercise. 

The Haunted Mansion was experiencing a major empty spell: the Snow CrashSpectacular parade had just swept through Liberty Square en route toFantasyland, dragging hordes of guests along with it, dancing to theJapRap sounds of the comical Sushi-K and aping the movements of thebrave Hiro Protagonist. When they blew out, Liberty Square was a ghosttown, and I grabbed the opportunity to ride the Mansion five times in arow, walking on every time. 

The way I tell it to Lil, I noticed her and then I noticed the Mansion, but to tell the truth it was the other way around. 

The first couple rides through, I was just glad of the aggressive airconditioning and the delicious sensation of sweat drying on my skin. Buton the third pass, I started to notice just how goddamn cool the thingwas. There wasn't a single bit of tech more advanced than a film-loopprojector in the whole place, but it was all so cunningly contrived thatthe illusion of a haunted house was perfect: the ghosts that whirledthrough the ballroom were _ghosts_, three-dimensional and ethereal andphantasmic. The ghosts that sang in comical tableaux through thegraveyard were equally convincing, genuinely witty and simultaneouslycreepy. 

My fourth pass through, I noticed the _detail_, the hostile eyes workedinto the wallpaper's pattern, the motif repeated in the molding, thechandeliers, the photo gallery. I began to pick out the words to "GrimGrinning Ghosts, " the song that is repeated throughout the ride, whetherin sinister organ-tones repeating the main theme troppo troppo or thespritely singing of the four musical busts in the graveyard. 

It's a catchy tune, one that I hummed on my fifth pass through, thistime noticing that the overaggressive AC was, actually, mysteriouschills that blew through the rooms as wandering spirits made theirpresence felt. By the time I debarked for the fifth time, I waswhistling the tune with jazzy improvisations in a mixed-up tempo. 

That's when Lil and I ran into each other. She was picking up adiscarded ice-cream wrapper -- I'd seen a dozen castmembers picking uptrash that day, seen it so frequently that I'd started doing it myself. She grinned slyly at me as I debarked into the fried-food-and-disinfectant perfume of the Park, hands in pockets, thoroughly pleasedwith myself for having so completely _experienced_ a really fine hunk ofart. 

I smiled back at her, because it was only natural that one of theWhuffie-kings who were privileged to tend this bit of heavenlyentertainment should notice how thoroughly I was enjoying her work. 

"That's really, really Bitchun, " I said to her, admiring the titanicmountains of Whuffie my HUD attributed to her. 

She was in character, and not supposed to be cheerful, but castmembersof her generation can't help but be friendly. She compromised betweenghastly demeanor and her natural sweet spirit, and leered a grin at me, thumped through a zombie's curtsey, and moaned "Thank you -- we _do_ tryto keep it _spirited_. "

I groaned appreciatively, and started to notice just how very cute shewas, this little button of a girl with her rotting maid's uniform andher feather-shedding duster. She was just so clean and scrubbed andhappy about everything, she radiated it and made me want to pinch hercheeks -- either set. 

The moment was on me, and so I said, "When do they let you ghouls off?I'd love to take you out for a Zombie or a Bloody Mary. "

Which led to more horrifying banter, and to my taking her out for acouple at the Adventurer's Club, learning her age in the process andlosing my nerve, telling myself that there was nothing we could possiblyhave to say to each other across a century-wide gap. 

While I tell Lil that I noticed her first and the Mansion second, thereverse is indeed true. But it's also true -- and I never told her this-- that the thing I love best about the Mansion is:

It's where I met her. 

#

Dan and I spent the day riding the Mansion, drafting scripts for thetelepresence players who we hoped to bring on-board. We were in atotally creative zone, the dialog running as fast as he could transcribeit. Jamming on ideas with Dan was just about as terrific as a pass-timecould be. 

I was all for leaking the plan to the Net right away, getting hearts-and-minds action with our core audience, but Lil turned it down. 

She was going to spend the next couple days quietly politicking amongthe rest of the ad-hoc, getting some support for the idea, and shedidn't want the appearance of impropriety that would come from havingoutsiders being brought in before the ad-hoc. 

Talking to the ad-hocs, bringing them around -- it was a skill I'd neverreally mastered. Dan was good at it, Lil was good at it, but me, I thinkthat I was too self-centered to ever develop good skills as apeacemaker. In my younger days, I assumed that it was because I wassmarter than everyone else, with no patience for explaining things inshort words for mouth-breathers who just didn't get it. 

The truth of the matter is, I'm a bright enough guy, but I'm hardly agenius. Especially when it comes to people. Probably comes from BeatingThe Crowd, never seeing individuals, just the mass -- the enemy ofexpedience. 

I never would have made it into the Liberty Square ad-hoc on my own. Lilmade it happen for me, long before we started sleeping together. I'dassumed that her folks would be my best allies in the process of joiningup, but they were too jaded, too ready to take the long sleep to paymuch attention to a newcomer like me. 

Lil took me under her wing, inviting me to after-work parties, talkingme up to her cronies, quietly passing around copies of my thesis-work. And she did the same in reverse, sincerely extolling the virtues of theothers I met, so that I knew what there was to respect about them andcouldn't help but treat them as individuals. 

In the years since, I'd lost that respect. Mostly, I palled around withLil, and once he arrived, Dan, and with net-friends around the world. The ad-hocs that I worked with all day treated me with basic courtesybut not much friendliness. 

I guess I treated them the same. When I pictured them in my mind, theywere a faceless, passive-aggressive mass, too caught up in the starchyworld of consensus-building to ever do much of anything. 

Dan and I threw ourselves into it headlong, trolling the Net for addresslists of Mansion-otakus from the four corners of the globe, spreadsheeting them against their timezones, temperaments, and, ofcourse, their Whuffie. 

"That's weird, " I said, looking up from the old-fashioned terminal I wasusing -- my systems were back offline. They'd been sputtering up anddown for a couple days now, and I kept meaning to go to the doctor, butI'd never gotten 'round to it. Periodically, I'd get a jolt of urgencywhen I remembered that this meant my backup was stale-dating, but theMansion always took precedence. 

"Huh?" he said. 

I tapped the display. "See these?" It was a fan-site, displaying acollection of animated 3-D meshes of various elements of the Mansion, part of a giant collaborative project that had been ongoing for decades, to build an accurate 3-D walkthrough of every inch of the Park. I'd usedthose meshes to build my own testing fly-throughs. 

"Those are terrific, " Dan said. "That guy must be a total _fiend_. " Themeshes' author had painstakingly modeled, chained and animated everyghost in the ballroom scene, complete with the kinematics necessary forfull motion. Where a "normal" fan-artist might've used a standard humankinematics library for the figures, this one had actually written hisown from the ground up, so that the ghosts moved with a spectralfluidity that was utterly unhuman. 

"Who's the author?" Dan asked. "Do we have him on our list yet?"

I scrolled down to display the credits. "I'll be damned, " Dan breathed. 

The author was Tim, Debra's elfin crony. He'd submitted the designs aweek before my assassination. 

"What do you think it means?" I asked Dan, though I had a couple ideason the subject myself. 

"Tim's a Mansion nut, " Dan said. "I knew that. "

"You knew?"

He looked a little defensive. "Sure. I told you, back when you had mehanging out with Debra's gang. "

Had I asked him to hang out with Debra? As I remembered it, it had beenhis suggestion. Too much to think about. 

"But what does it mean, Dan? Is he an ally? Should we try to recruithim? Or is he the one that'd convinced Debra she needs to take over theMansion?"

Dan shook his head. "I'm not even sure that she wants to take over theMansion. I know Debra, all she wants to do is turn ideas into things, asfast and as copiously as possible. She picks her projects carefully. She's acquisitive, sure, but she's cautious. She had a great idea forPresidents, and so she took over. I never heard her talk about theMansion. "

"Of course you didn't. She's cagey. Did you hear her talk about the Hallof Presidents?"

Dan fumbled. "Not really. . . I mean, not in so many words, but --"

"But nothing, " I said. "She's after the Mansion, she's after the MagicKingdom, she's after the Park. She's taking over, goddamn it, and I'mthe only one who seems to have noticed. "

#

I came clean to Lil about my systems that night, as we were fighting. Fighting had become our regular evening pastime, and Dan had taken tosleeping at one of the hotels on-site rather than endure it. 

I'd started it, of course. "We're going to get killed if we don't getoff our asses and start the rehab, " I said, slamming myself down on thesofa and kicking at the scratched coffee table. I heard the hysteria andunreason in my voice and it just made me madder. I was frustrated by notbeing able to check in on Suneep and Dan, and, as usual, it was too lateat night to call anyone and do anything about it. By the morning, I'dhave forgotten again. 

From the kitchen, Lil barked back, "I'm doing what I can, Jules. Ifyou've got a better way, I'd love to hear about it. "

"Oh, bullshit. I'm doing what I can, planning the thing out. I'm readyto _go_. It was your job to get the ad-hocs ready for it, but you keeptelling me they're not. When will they be?"

"Jesus, you're a nag. "

"I wouldn't nag if you'd only fucking make it happen. What are you doingall day, anyway? Working shifts at the Mansion? Rearranging deck chairson the Great Titanic Adventure?"

"I'm working my fucking _ass_ off. I've spoken to every goddamn one ofthem at least twice this week about it. "

"Sure, " I hollered at the kitchen. "Sure you have. "

"Don't take my word for it, then. Check my fucking phone logs. "

She waited. 

"Well? Check them!"

"I'll check them later, " I said, dreading where this was going. 

"Oh, no you _don't_, " she said, stalking into the room, fuming. "Youcan't call me a liar and then refuse to look at the evidence. " Sheplanted her hands on her slim little hips and glared at me. She'd gonepale and I could count every freckle on her face, her throat, hercollarbones, the swell of her cleavage in the old vee-neck shirt I'dgiven her on a day-trip to Nassau. 

"Well?" she asked. She looked ready to wring my neck. 

"I can't, " I admitted, not meeting her eyes. 

"Yes you can -- here, I'll dump it to your public directory. "

Her expression shifted to one of puzzlement when she failed to locate meon her network. "What's going on?"

So I told her. Offline, outcast, malfunctioning. 

"Well, why haven't you gone to the doctor? I mean, it's been _weeks_. I'll call him right now. "

"Forget it, " I said. "I'll see him tomorrow. No sense in getting him outof bed. "

But I didn't see him the day after, or the day after that. Too much todo, and the only times I remembered to call someone, I was too far froma public terminal or it was too late or too early. My systems cameonline a couple times, and I was too busy with the plans for theMansion. Lil grew accustomed to the drifts of hard copy that litteredthe house, to printing out her annotations to my designs and leavingthem on my favorite chair -- to living like the cavemen of theinformation age had, surrounded by dead trees and ticking clocks. 

Being offline helped me focus. Focus is hardly the word for it -- Iobsessed. I sat in front of the terminal I'd brought home all day, everyday, crunching plans, dictating voicemail. People who wanted to reach mehad to haul ass out to the house, and _speak_ to me. 

I grew too obsessed to fight, and Dan moved back, and then it was myturn to take hotel rooms so that the rattle of my keyboard wouldn't keephim up nights. He and Lil were working a full-time campaign to recruitthe ad-hoc to our cause, and I started to feel like we were finally inharmony, about to reach our goal. 

I went home one afternoon clutching a sheaf of hardcopy and burst intothe living room, gabbling a mile-a-minute about a wrinkle on my originalplan that would add a third walk-through segment to the ride, increasingthe number of telepresence rigs we could use without decreasingthroughput. 

I was mid-babble when my systems came back online. The public chatter inthe room sprang up on my HUD. 

_And then I'm going to tear off every stitch of clothing and jump you. _

_And then what?_

_I'm going to bang you till you limp. _

_Jesus, Lil, you are one rangy cowgirl. _

My eyes closed, shutting out everything except for the glowing letters. Quickly, they vanished. I opened my eyes again, looking at Lil, who wasflushed and distracted. Dan looked scared. 

"What's going on, Dan?" I asked quietly. My heart hammered in my chest, but I felt calm and detached. 

"Jules, " he began, then gave up and looked at Lil. 

Lil had, by that time, figured out that I was back online, that theirsecret messaging had been discovered. 

"Having fun, Lil?" I asked. 

Lil shook her head and glared at me. "Just go, Julius. I'll send yourstuff to the hotel. "

"You want me to go, huh? So you can bang him till he limps?"

"This is my house, Julius. I'm asking you to get out of it. I'll see youat work tomorrow -- we're having a general ad-hoc meeting to vote on therehab. "

It was her house. 

"Lil, Julius --" Dan began. 

"This is between me and him, " Lil said. "Stay out of it. "

I dropped my papers -- I wanted to throw them, but I dropped them, _flump_, and I turned on my heel and walked out, not bothering to closethe door behind me. 

#

Dan showed up at the hotel ten minutes after I did and rapped on mydoor. I was all-over numb as I opened the door. He had a bottle oftequila -- _my_ tequila, brought over from the house that I'd sharedwith Lil. 

He sat down on the bed and stared at the logo-marked wallpaper. I tookthe bottle from him, got a couple glasses from the bathroom and poured. 

"It's my fault, " he said. 

"I'm sure it is, " I said. 

"We got to drinking a couple nights ago. She was really upset. Hadn'tseen you in days, and when she _did_ see you, you freaked her out. Snapping at her. Arguing. Insulting her. "

"So you made her, " I said. 

He shook his head, then nodded, took a drink. "I did. It's been a longtime since I. . . "

"You had sex with my girlfriend, in my house, while I was away, working. "

"Jules, I'm sorry. I did it, and I kept on doing it. I'm not much of afriend to either of you. 

"She's pretty broken up. She wanted me to come out here and tell you itwas all a mistake, that you were just being paranoid. "

We sat in silence for a long time. I refilled his glass, then my own. 

"I couldn't do that, " he said. "I'm worried about you. You haven't beenright, not for months. I don't know what it is, but you should get to adoctor. "

"I don't need a doctor, " I snapped. The liquor had melted the numbnessand left burning anger and bile, my constant companions. "I need afriend who doesn't fuck my girlfriend when my back is turned. "

I threw my glass at the wall. It bounced off, leaving tequila-stains onthe wallpaper, and rolled under the bed. Dan started, but stayed seated. If he'd stood up, I would've hit him. Dan's good at crises. 

"If it's any consolation, I expect to be dead pretty soon, " he said. Hegave me a wry grin. "My Whuffie's doing good. This rehab should take itup over the top. I'll be ready to go. "

That stopped me. I'd somehow managed to forget that Dan, my good friendDan, was going to kill himself. 

"You're going to do it, " I said, sitting down next to him. It hurt tothink about it. I really liked the bastard. He might've been my bestfriend. 

There was a knock at the door. I opened it without checking thepeephole. It was Lil. 

She looked younger than ever. Young and small and miserable. A snideremark died in my throat. I wanted to hold her. 

She brushed past me and went to Dan, who squirmed out of her embrace. 

"No, " he said, and stood up and sat on the windowsill, staring down atthe Seven Seas Lagoon. 

"Dan's just been explaining to me that he plans on being dead in acouple months, " I said. "Puts a damper on the long-term plans, doesn'tit, Lil?"

Tears streamed down her face and she seemed to fold in on herself. "I'lltake what I can get, " she said. 

I choked on a knob of misery, and I realized that it was Dan, not Lil, whose loss upset me the most. 

Lil took Dan's hand and led him out of the room. 

_I guess I'll take what I can get, too_, I thought. 

========= CHAPTER 6 =========

Lying on my hotel bed, mesmerized by the lazy turns of the ceiling fan, I pondered the possibility that I was nuts. 

It wasn't unheard of, even in the days of the Bitchun Society, and eventhough there were cures, they weren't pleasant. 

I was once married to a crazy person. We were both about 70, and I wasliving for nothing but joy. Her name was Zoya, and I called her Zed. 

We met in orbit, where I'd gone to experience the famed low-gravitysybarites. Getting staggering drunk is not much fun at one gee, but atten to the neg eight, it's a blast. You don't stagger, you _bounce_, andwhen you're bouncing in a sphere full of other bouncing, happy, boisterous naked people, things get deeply fun. 

I was bouncing around inside a clear sphere that was a mile in diameter, filled with smaller spheres in which one could procure bulbs of fruity, deadly concoctions. Musical instruments littered the sphere's floor, andif you knew how to play, you'd snag one, tether it to you and startplaying. Others would pick up their own axes and jam along. The tunesvaried from terrific to awful, but they were always energetic. 

I had been working on my third symphony on and off, and whenever Ithought I had a nice bit nailed, I'd spend some time in the sphereplaying it. Sometimes, the strangers who jammed in gave me new andinteresting lines of inquiry, and that was good. Even when they didn't, playing an instrument was a fast track to intriguing an interesting, naked stranger. 

Which is how we met. She snagged a piano and pounded out barrelhouseruns in quirky time as I carried the main thread of the movement on acello. At first it was irritating, but after a short while I came to adawning comprehension of what she was doing to my music, and it wasreally _good_. I'm a sucker for musicians. 

We brought the session to a crashing stop, me bowing furiously asspheres of perspiration beaded on my body and floated gracefully intothe hydrotropic recyclers, she beating on the 88 like they were the perpwho killed her partner. 

I collapsed dramatically as the last note crashed through the bubble. The singles, couples and groups stopped in midflight coitus to applaud. She took a bow, untethered herself from the Steinway, and headed for thehatch. 

I coiled my legs up and did a fast burn through the sphere, desperate toreach the hatch before she did. I caught her as she was leaving. 

"Hey!" I said. "That was great! I'm Julius! How're you doing?"

She reached out with both hands and squeezed my nose and my unitsimultaneously -- not hard, you understand, but playfully. "Honk!" shesaid, and squirmed through the hatch while I gaped at my burgeoningchub-on. 

I chased after her. "Wait, " I called as she tumbled through the spoke ofthe station towards the gravity. 

She had a pianist's body -- re-engineered arms and hands that stretchedfor impossible lengths, and she used them with a spacehand's grace, vaulting herself forward at speed. I bumbled after her best as I couldon my freshman spacelegs, but by the time I reached the half-gee rim ofthe station, she was gone. 

I didn't find her again until the next movement was done and I went tothe bubble to try it out on an oboe. I was just getting warmed up whenshe passed through the hatch and tied off to the piano. 

This time, I clamped the oboe under my arm and bopped over to her beforemoistening the reed and blowing. I hovered over the piano's top, lookingher in the eye as we jammed. Her mood that day was 4/4 time and I-IV-Vprogressions, in a feel that swung around from blues to rock to folk, teasing at the edge of my own melodies. She noodled at me, I noodledback at her, and her eyes crinkled charmingly whenever I managed asmidge of tuneful wit. 

She was almost completely flatchested, and covered in a fine, red downyfur, like a chipmunk. It was a jaunter's style, suited to the climate-controlled, soft-edged life in space. Fifty years later, I was datingLil, another redhead, but Zed was my first. 

I played and played, entranced by the fluidity of her movements at thekeyboard, her comical moues of concentration when picking out aparticularly kicky little riff. When I got tired, I took it to a slowbridge or gave her a solo. I was going to make this last as long as Icould. Meanwhile, I maneuvered my way between her and the hatch. 

When I blew the last note, I was wrung out as a washcloth, but Isummoned the energy to zip over to the hatch and block it. She calmlyuntied and floated over to me. 

I looked in her eyes, silvered slanted cat-eyes, eyes that I'd beenstaring into all afternoon, and watched the smile that started at theircorners and spread right down to her long, elegant toes. She looked backat me, then, at length, grabbed ahold of my joint again. 

"You'll do, " she said, and led me to her sleeping quarters, across thestation. 

We didn't sleep. 

#

Zoya had been an early network engineer for the geosynch broadbandconstellations that went up at the cusp of the world's ascent intoBitchunry. She'd been exposed to a lot of hard rads and low gee and hadgenerally become pretty transhuman as time went by, upgrading with abewildering array of third-party enhancements: a vestigial tail, eyesthat saw through most of the RF spectrum, her arms, her fur, doglegreversible knee joints and a completely mechanical spine that wasn'tprone to any of the absolutely inane bullshit that plagues the rest ofus, like lower-back pain, intrascapular inflammation, sciatica andslipped discs. 

I thought I lived for fun, but I didn't have anything on Zed. She onlytalked when honking and whistling and grabbing and kissing wouldn't do, and routinely slapped upgrades into herself on the basis of any whimthat crossed her mind, like when she resolved to do a spacewalk bare-skinned and spent the afternoon getting tin-plated and iron-lunged. 

I fell in love with her a hundred times a day, and wanted to strangleher twice as often. She stayed on her spacewalk for a couple of days, floating around the bubble, making crazy faces at its mirrored exterior. She had no way of knowing if I was inside, but she assumed that I waswatching. Or maybe she didn't, and she was making faces for anyone'sbenefit. 

But then she came back through the lock, strange and wordless and hereyes full of the stars she'd seen and her metallic skin cool with thebreath of empty space, and she led me a merry game of tag through thestation, the mess hall where we skidded sloppy through a wobbly ovoid ofrice pudding, the greenhouses where she burrowed like a gopher andshinnied like a monkey, the living quarters and bubbles as weinterrupted a thousand acts of coitus. 

You'd have thought that we'd have followed it up with an act of our own, and truth be told, that was certainly my expectation when we started thegame I came to think of as the steeplechase, but we never did. Halfwaythrough, I'd lose track of carnal urges and return to a state ofchildlike innocence, living only for the thrill of the chase and thegiggly feeling I got whenever she found some new, even-more-outrageouscorner to turn. I think we became legendary on the station, that crazypair that's always zipping in and zipping away, like having your partycrashed by two naked, coed Marx Brothers. 

When I asked her to marry me, to return to Earth with me, to live withme until the universe's mainspring unwound, she laughed, honked my noseand my willie and shouted, "YOU'LL _DO_!"

I took her home to Toronto and we took up residence ten storiesunderground in overflow residence for the University. Our Whuffie wasn'tso hot earthside, and the endless institutional corridors made her feelat home while affording her opportunities for mischief. 

But bit by bit, the mischief dwindled, and she started talking more. Atfirst, I admit I was relieved, glad that my strange, silent wife wasfinally acting normal, making nice with the neighbors instead ofpranking them with endless honks and fanny-kicks and squirt guns. Wegave up the steeplechase and she had the doglegs taken out, her furremoved, her eyes unsilvered to a hazel that was pretty and asfathomable as the silver had been inscrutable. 

We wore clothes. We entertained. I started to rehearse my symphony inlow-Whuffie halls and parks with any musicians I could drum up, and shecame out and didn't play, just sat to the side and smiled and smiledwith a smile that never went beyond her lips. 

She went nuts. 

She shat herself. She pulled her hair. She cut herself with knives. Sheaccused me of plotting to kill her. She set fire to the neighbors'apartments, wrapped herself in plastic sheeting, dry-humped thefurniture. 

She went nuts. She did it in broad strokes, painting the walls of ourbedroom with her blood, jagging all night through rant after rant. Ismiled and nodded and faced it for as long as I could, then I grabbedher and hauled her, kicking like a mule, to the doctor's office on thesecond floor. She'd been dirtside for a year and nuts for a month, butit took me that long to face up to it. 

The doc diagnosed nonchemical dysfunction, which was by way of sayingthat it was her mind, not her brain, that was broken. In other words, I'd driven her nuts. 

You can get counseling for nonchemical dysfunction, basically trying totalk it out, learn to feel better about yourself. She didn't want to. 

She was miserable, suicidal, murderous. In the brief moments of luciditythat she had under sedation, she consented to being restored from abackup that was made before we came to Toronto. 

I was at her side in the hospital when she woke up. I had prepared awritten synopsis of the events since her last backup for her, and sheread it over the next couple days. 

"Julius, " she said, while I was making breakfast in our subterraneanapartment. She sounded so serious, so fun-free, that I knew immediatelythat the news wouldn't be good. 

"Yes?" I said, setting out plates of bacon and eggs, steaming cups ofcoffee. 

"I'm going to go back to space, and revert to an older version. " She hada shoulderbag packed, and she had traveling clothes on. 

_Oh, shit. _ "Great, " I said, with forced cheerfulness, making a mentalinventory of my responsibilities dirtside. "Give me a minute or two, I'll pack up. I miss space, too. "

She shook her head, and anger blazed in her utterly scrutable hazeleyes. "No. I'm going back to who I was, before I met you. "

It hurt, bad. I had loved the old, steeplechase Zed, had loved her funand mischief. The Zed she'd become after we wed was terrible andterrifying, but I'd stuck with her out of respect for the person she'dbeen. 

Now she was off to restore herself from a backup made before she met me. She was going to lop 18 months out of her life, start over again, revertto a saved version. 

Hurt? It ached like a motherfucker. 

I went back to the station a month later, and saw her jamming in thesphere with a guy who had three extra sets of arms depending from hiships. He scuttled around the sphere while she played a jig on the piano, and when her silver eyes lit on me, there wasn't a shred of recognitionin them. She'd never met me. 

I died some, too, putting the incident out of my head and sojourning toDisney World, there to reinvent myself with a new group of friends, anew career, a new life. I never spoke of Zed again -- especially not toLil, who hardly needed me to pollute her with remembrances of my crazyexes. 

#

If I was nuts, it wasn't the kind of spectacular nuts that Zed had gone. It was a slow, seething, ugly nuts that had me alienating my friends, sabotaging my enemies, driving my girlfriend into my best friend's arms. 

I decided that I would see a doctor, just as soon as we'd run the rehabpast the ad-hoc's general meeting. I had to get my priorities straight. 

I pulled on last night's clothes and walked out to the Monorail stationin the main lobby. The platform was jammed with happy guests, bright andcheerful and ready for a day of steady, hypermediated fun. I tried tomake myself attend to them as individuals, but try as I might, they keptturning into a crowd, and I had to plant my feet firmly on the platformto keep from weaving among them to the edge, the better to snag a seat. 

The meeting was being held over the Sunshine Tree Terrace inAdventureland, just steps from where I'd been turned into a road-pizzaby the still-unidentified assassin. The Adventureland ad-hocs owed theLiberty Square crew a favor since my death had gone down on their turf, so they had given us use of their prize meeting room, where the Floridasun streamed through the slats of the shutters, casting a hash of dust-filled shafts of light across the room. The faint sounds of the tiki-drums and the spieling Jungle Cruise guides leaked through the room, alow-key ambient buzz from two of the Park's oldest rides. 

There were almost a hundred ad-hocs in the Liberty Square crew, almostall second-gen castmembers with big, friendly smiles. They filled theroom to capacity, and there was much hugging and handshaking before themeeting came to order. I was thankful that the room was too small forthe _de rigeur_ ad-hoc circle-of-chairs, so that Lil was able to standat a podium and command a smidge of respect. 

"Hi there!" she said, brightly. The weepy puffiness was still presentaround her eyes, if you knew how to look for it, but she was expert atputting on a brave face no matter what the ache. 

The ad-hocs roared back a collective, "Hi, Lil!" and laughed at theirown corny tradition. Oh, they sure were a barrel of laughs at the MagicKingdom. 

"Everybody knows why we're here, right?" Lil said, with a self-deprecating smile. She'd been lobbying hard for weeks, after all. "Doesanyone have any questions about the plans? We'd like to start executingright away. "

A guy with deliberately boyish, wholesome features put his arm in theair. Lil acknowledged him with a nod. "When you say 'right away, ' do youmean --"

I cut in. "Tonight. After this meeting. We're on an eight-weekproduction schedule, and the sooner we start, the sooner it'll befinished. "

The crowd murmured, unsettled. Lil shot me a withering look. I shrugged. Politics was not my game. 

Lil said, "Don, we're trying something new here, a really streamlinedprocess. The good part is, the process is _short_. In a couple months, we'll know if it's working for us. If it's not, hey, we can turn itaround in a couple months, too. That's why we're not spending as muchtime planning as we usually do. It won't take five years for the idea toprove out, so the risks are lower. "

Another castmember, a woman, apparent 40 with a round, motherly demeanorsaid, "I'm all for moving fast -- Lord knows, our pacing hasn't alwaysbeen that hot. But I'm concerned about all these new people you proposeto recruit -- won't having more people slow us down when it comes tomaking new decisions?"

_No_, I thought sourly, _because the people I'm bringing in aren'taddicted to meetings_. 

Lil nodded. "That's a good point, Lisa. The offer we're making to thetelepresence players is probationary -- they don't get to vote untilafter we've agreed that the rehab is a success. "

Another castmember stood. I recognized him: Dave, a heavyset, self-important jerk who loved to work the front door, even though he blew hisspiel about half the time. "Lillian, " he said, smiling sadly at her, "Ithink you're really making a big mistake here. We love the Mansion, allof us, and so do the guests. It's a piece of history, and we're itscustodians, not its masters. Changing it like this, well. . . " he shookhis head. "It's not good stewardship. If the guests wanted to walkthrough a funhouse with guys jumping out of the shadows saying 'booga-booga, ' they'd go to one of the Halloween Houses in their hometowns. TheMansion's better than that. I can't be a part of this plan. "

I wanted to knock the smug grin off his face. I'd delivered essentiallythe same polemic a thousand times -- in reference to Debra's work -- andhearing it from this jerk in reference to _mine_ made me go all hot andred inside. 

"Look, " I said. "If we don't do this, if we don't change things, they'llget changed _for_ us. By someone else. The question, _Dave_, is whethera responsible custodian lets his custodianship be taken away from him, or whether he does everything he can to make sure that he's still aroundto ensure that his charge is properly cared for. Good custodianshipisn't sticking your head in the sand. "

I could tell I wasn't doing any good. The mood of the crowd was gettingdarker, the faces more set. I resolved not to speak again until themeeting was done, no matter what the provocation. 

Lil smoothed my remarks over, and fielded a dozen more, and it lookedlike the objections would continue all afternoon and all night and allthe next day, and I felt woozy and overwrought and miserable all at thesame time, staring at Lil and her harried smile and her nervoussmoothing of her hair over her ears. 

Finally, she called the question. By tradition, the votes were collectedin secret and publicly tabulated over the data-channels. The group'seyes unfocussed as they called up HUDs and watched the totals as theyrolled in. I was offline and unable to vote or watch. 

At length, Lil heaved a relieved sigh and smiled, dropping her handsbehind her back. 

"All right then, " she said, over the crowd's buzz. "Let's get to work. "

I stood up, saw Dan and Lil staring into each other's eyes, a meaningfulglance between new lovers, and I saw red. Literally. My vision washedover pink, and a strobe pounded at the edges of my vision. I took twolumbering steps towards them and opened my mouth to say somethinghorrible, and what came out was "Waaagh. " My right side went numb and myleg slipped out from under me and I crashed to the floor. 

The slatted light from the shutters cast its way across my chest as Itried to struggle up with my left arm, and then it all went black. 

#

I wasn't nuts after all. 

The doctor's office in the Main Street infirmary was clean and white anddecorated with posters of Jiminy Cricket in doctors' whites with anoutsized stethoscope. I came to on a hard pallet under a sign thatreminded me to get a check-up twice a year, by gum! and I tried to bringmy hands up to shield my eyes from the over bright light and the over-cheerful signage, and discovered that I couldn't move my arms. Furtherinvestigation revealed that this was because I was strapped down, infull-on four-point restraint. 

"Waaagh, " I said again. 

Dan's worried face swam into my field of vision, along with a serious-looking doctor, apparent 70, with a Norman Rockwell face full ofcrow'sfeet and smile-lines. 

"Welcome back, Julius. I'm Doctor Pete, " the doctor said, in a kindlyvoice that matched the face. Despite my recent disillusion withcastmember bullshit, I found his schtick comforting. 

I slumped back against the palette while the doc shone lights in my eyesand consulted various diagnostic apparati. I bore it in stoic silence, too confounded by the horrible Waaagh sounds to attempt more speech. Thedoc would tell me what was going on when he was ready. 

"Does he need to be tied up still?" Dan asked, and I shook my headurgently. Being tied up wasn't my idea of a good time. 

The doc smiled kindly. "I think it's for the best, for now. Don't worry, Julius, we'll have you up and about soon enough. "

Dan protested, but stopped when the doc threatened to send him out ofthe room. He took my hand instead. 

My nose itched. I tried to ignore it, but it got worse and worse, untilit was all I could think of, the flaming lance of itch that strobed atthe tip of my nostril. Furiously, I wrinkled my face, rattled at myrestraints. The doc absentmindedly noticed my gyrations and delicatelyscratched my nose with a gloved finger. The relief was fantastic. I justhoped my nuts didn't start itching anytime soon. 

Finally, the doctor pulled up a chair and did something that caused thehead of the bed to raise up so that I could look him in the eye. 

"Well, now, " he said, stroking his chin. "Julius, you've got a problem. Your friend here tells me your systems have been offline for more than amonth. It sure would've been better if you'd come in to see me when itstarted up. 

"But you didn't, and things got worse. " He nodded up at Jiminy Cricket'srecriminations: Go ahead, see your doc! "It's good advice, son, butwhat's done is done. You were restored from a backup about eight weeksago, I see. Without more tests, I can't be sure, but my theory is thatthe brain-machine interface they installed at that time had a materialdefect. It's been deteriorating ever since, misfiring and rebooting. Theshut-downs are a protective mechanism, meant to keep it from introducingthe kind of seizure you experienced this afternoon. When the interfacesenses malfunction, it shuts itself down and boots a diagnostic mode, attempts to fix itself and come back online. 

"Well, that's fine for minor problems, but in cases like this, it's badnews. The interface has been deteriorating steadily, and it's only amatter of time before it does some serious damage. "

"Waaagh?" I asked. I meant to say, _All right, but what's wrong with mymouth?_

The doc put a finger to my lips. "Don't try. The interface has lockedup, and it's taken some of your voluntary nervous processes with it. Intime, it'll probably shut down, but for now, there's no point. That'swhy we've got you strapped down -- you were thrashing pretty hard whenthey brought you in, and we didn't want you to hurt yourself. "

_Probably shut down_? Jesus. I could end up stuck like this forever. Istarted shaking. 

The doc soothed me, stroking my hand, and in the process pressed atransdermal on my wrist. The panic receded as the transdermal's sedativeoozed into my bloodstream. 

"There, there, " he said. "It's nothing permanent. We can grow you a newclone and refresh it from your last backup. Unfortunately, that backupis a few months old. If we'd caught it earlier, we may've been able tosalvage a current backup, but given the deterioration you've displayedto date. . . Well, there just wouldn't be any point. "

My heart hammered. I was going to lose two months -- lose it all, neverhappened. My assassination, the new Hall of Presidents and my shamefulattempt thereon, the fights with Lil, Lil and Dan, the meeting. My plansfor the rehab! All of it, good and bad, every moment flensed away. 

I couldn't do it. I had a rehab to finish, and I was the only one whounderstood how it had to be done. Without my relentless prodding, thead-hocs would surely revert to their old, safe ways. They might evenleave it half-done, halt the process for an interminable review, presenta soft belly for Debra to savage. 

I wouldn't be restoring from backup. 

#

I had two more seizures before the interface finally gave up and shutitself down. I remember the first, a confusion of vision-occludingstrobes and uncontrollable thrashing and the taste of copper, but thesecond happened without waking me from deep unconsciousness. 

When I came to again in the infirmary, Dan was still there. He had aday's growth of beard and new worrylines at the corners of his newlyrejuvenated eyes. The doctor came in, shaking his head. 

"Well, now, it seems like the worst is over. I've drawn up the consentforms for the refresh and the new clone will be ready in an hour or two. In the meantime, I think heavy sedation is in order. Once the restore'sbeen completed, we'll retire this body for you and we'll be all finishedup. "

Retire this body? Kill me, is what it meant. 

"No, " I said. I thrilled in my restraints: my voice was back under mycontrol!

"Oh, really now. " The doc lost his bedside manner, let his exasperationslip through. "There's nothing else for it. If you'd come to me when itall started, well, we might've had other options. You've got no one toblame but yourself. "

"No, " I repeated. "Not now. I won't sign. "

Dan put his hand on mine. I tried to jerk out from under it, but therestraints and his grip held me fast. "You've got to do it, Julius. It'sfor the best, " he said. 

"I'm not going to let you kill me, " I said, through clenched teeth. Hisfingertips were callused, worked rough with exertion well beyond thenormal call of duty. 

"No one's killing you, son, " the doctor said. Son, son, son. Who knewhow old he was? He could be 18 for all I knew. "It's just the opposite:we're saving you. If you continue like this, it will only get worse. Theseizures, mental breakdown, the whole melon going soft. You don't wantthat. "

I thought of Zed's spectacular transformation into a crazy person. _No, I sure don't_. "I don't care about the interface. Chop it out. I can'tdo it now. " I swallowed. "Later. After the rehab. Eight more weeks. "

#

The irony! Once the doc knew I was serious, he sent Dan out of the roomand rolled his eyes up while he placed a call. I saw his gorge work ashe subvocalized. He left me bound to the table, to wait. 

No clocks in the infirmary, and no internal clock, and it may have beenten minutes or five hours. I was catheterized, but I didn't know ituntil urgent necessity made the discovery for me. 

When the doc came back, he held a small device that I instantlyrecognized: a HERF gun. 

Oh, it wasn't the same model I'd used on the Hall of Presidents. Thisone was smaller, and better made, with the precise engineering of asurgical tool. The doc raised his eyebrows at me. "You know what thisis, " he said, flatly. A dim corner of my mind gibbered, _he knows, heknows, the Hall of Presidents_. But he didn't know. That episode waslocked in my mind, invulnerable to backup. 

"I know, " I said. 

"This one is high-powered in the extreme. It will penetrate theinterface's shielding and fuse it. It probably won't turn you into avegetable. That's the best I can do. If this fails, we will restore youfrom your last backup. You have to sign the consent before I use it. "He'd dropped all kindly pretense from his voice, not bothering todisguise his disgust. I was pitching out the miracle of the BitchunSociety, the thing that had all but obsoleted the medical profession:why bother with surgery when you can grow a clone, take a backup, andrefresh the new body? Some people swapped corpuses just to get rid of acold. 

I signed. The doc wheeled my gurney into the crash and hum of theutilidors and then put it on a freight tram that ran to the Imagineeringcompound, and thence to a heavy, exposed Faraday cage. Of course: usingthe HERF on me would kill any electronics in the neighborhood. They hadto shield me before they pulled the trigger. 

The doc placed the gun on my chest and loosened my restraints. He sealedthe cage and retreated to the lab's door. He pulled a heavy apron andhelmet with faceguard from a hook beside the door. 

"Once I am outside the door, point it at your head and pull the trigger. I'll come back in five minutes. Once I am in the room, place the gun onthe floor and do not touch it. It is only good for a single usage, but Ihave no desire to find out I'm wrong. "

He closed the door. I took the pistol in my hand. It was heavy, densewith its stored energy, the tip a parabolic hollow to better focus itscone. 

I lifted the gun to my temple and let it rest there. My thumb found thetrigger-stud. 

I paused. This wouldn't kill me, but it might lock the interfaceforever, paralyzing me, turning me into a thrashing maniac. I knew thatI would never be able to pull the trigger. The doc must've known, too --this was his way of convincing me to let him do that restore. 

I opened my mouth to call the doc, and what came out was "Waaagh!"

The seizure started. My arm jerked and my thumb nailed the stud, andthere was an ozone tang. The seizure stopped. 

I had no more interface. 

#

The doc looked sour and pinched when he saw me sitting up on the gurney, rubbing at my biceps. He produced a handheld diagnostic tool and pointedit at my melon, then pronounced every bit of digital microcircuitry init dead. For the first time since my twenties, I was no more advancedthan nature had made me. 

The restraints left purple bruises at my wrists and ankles, where I'dthrashed against them. I hobbled out of the Faraday cage and the labunder my own power, but just barely, my muscles groaning from theinadvertent isometric exercises of my seizure. 

Dan was waiting in the utilidor, crouched and dozing against the wall. The doc shook him awake and his head snapped up, his hand catching thedoc's in a lightning-quick reflex. It was easy to forget Dan's old lineof work here in the Magic Kingdom, but when he smoothly snagged thedoc's arm and sprang to his feet, eyes hard and alert, I remembered. Myold pal, the action hero. 

Quickly, Dan released the doc and apologized. He assessed my physicalstate and wordlessly wedged his shoulder in my armpit, supporting me. Ididn't have the strength to stop him. I needed sleep. 

"I'm taking you home, " he said. "We'll fight Debra off tomorrow. "

"Sure, " I said, and boarded the waiting tram. 

But we didn't go home. Dan took me back to my hotel, the Contemporary, and brought me up to my door. He keycarded the lock and stood awkwardlyas I hobbled into the empty room that was my new home, as I collapsedinto the bed that was mine now. 

With an apologetic look, he slunk away, back to Lil and the house we'dshared. 

I slapped on a sedative transdermal that the doc had given me, and addeda mood-equalizer that he'd recommended to control my "personalityswings. " In seconds, I was asleep. 

========= CHAPTER 7 =========

The meds helped me cope with the next couple of days, starting the rehabon the Mansion. We worked all night erecting a scaffolding around thefacade, though no real work would be done on it -- we wanted theappearance of rapid progress, and besides, I had an idea. 

I worked alongside Dan, using him as a personal secretary, handling mycalls, looking up plans, monitoring the Net for the first grumblings asthe Disney-going public realized that the Mansion was being taken downfor a full-blown rehab. We didn't exchange any unnecessary words, standing side by side without ever looking into one another's eyes. Icouldn't really feel awkward around Dan, anyway. He never let me, andbesides we had our hands full directing disappointed guests away fromthe Mansion. A depressing number of them headed straight for the Hall ofPresidents. 

We didn't have to wait long for the first panicked screed about theMansion to appear. Dan read it aloud off his HUD: "Hey! Anyone hearanything about scheduled maintenance at the HM? I just buzzed by on theway to the new H of P's and it looks like some big stuff's afoot --scaffolding, castmembers swarming in and out, see the pic. I hopethey're not screwing up a good thing. BTW, don't miss the new H of P's-- very Bitchun. "

"Right, " I said. "Who's the author, and is he on the list?"

Dan cogitated a moment. "_She_ is Kim Wright, and she's on the list. Good Whuffie, lots of Mansion fanac, big readership. "

"Call her, " I said. 

This was the plan: recruit rabid fans right away, get 'em in costume, and put 'em up on the scaffolds. Give them outsized, bat-adorned toolsand get them to play at construction activity in thumpy, undeadpantomime. In time, Suneep and his gang would have a batch oftelepresence robots up and running, and we'd move to them, get themwandering the queue area, interacting with curious guests. The newMansion would be open for business in 48 hours, albeit in stripped-downfashion. The scaffolding made for a nice weenie, a visual draw thatwould pull the hordes that thronged Debra's Hall of Presidents over fora curious peek or two. Buzz city. 

I'm a pretty smart guy. 

#

Dan paged this Kim person and spoke to her as she was debarking thePirates of the Caribbean. I wondered if she was the right person for thejob: she seemed awfully enamored of the rehabs that Debra and her crewhad performed. If I'd had more time, I would've run a deep backgroundcheck on every one of the names on my list, but that would've takenmonths. 

Dan made some small talk with Kim, speaking aloud in deference to myhandicap, before coming to the point. "We read your post about theMansion's rehab. You're the first one to notice it, and we wondered ifyou'd be interested in coming by to find out a little more about ourplans. "

Dan winced. "She's a screamer, " he whispered. 

Reflexively, I tried to pull up a HUD with my files on the Mansion fanswe hoped to recruit. Of course, nothing happened. I'd done that a dozentimes that morning, and there was no end in sight. I couldn't seem toget lathered up about it, though, nor about anything else, not even thehickey just visible under Dan's collar. The transdermal mood-balancer onmy bicep was seeing to that -- doctor's orders. 

"Fine, fine. We're standing by the Pet Cemetery, two cast members, male, in Mansion costumes. About five-ten, apparent 30. You can't miss us. "

She didn't. She arrived out of breath and excited, jogging. She wasapparent 20, and dressed like a real 20 year old, in a hipster climate-control cowl that clung to and released her limbs, which were long anddouble-kneed. All the rage among the younger set, including the girlwho'd shot me. 

But the resemblance to my killer ended with her dress and body. Shewasn't wearing a designer face, rather one that had enough imperfectionsto be the one she was born with, eyes set close and nose wide andslightly squashed. 

I admired the way she moved through the crowd, fast and low but withoutjostling anyone. "Kim, " I called as she drew near. "Over here. "

She gave a happy shriek and made a beeline for us. Even charging full-bore, she was good enough at navigating the crowd that she didn't brushagainst a single soul. When she reached us, she came up short andbounced a little. "Hi, I'm Kim!" she said, pumping my arm with thepeculiar violence of the extra-jointed. "Julius, " I said, then waitedwhile she repeated the process with Dan. 

"So, " she said, "what's the deal?"

I took her hand. "Kim, we've got a job for you, if you're interested. "

She squeezed my hand hard and her eyes shone. "I'll take it!" she said. 

I laughed, and so did Dan. It was a polite, castmembery sort of laugh, but underneath it was relief. "I think I'd better explain it to youfirst, " I said. 

"Explain away!" she said, and gave my hand another squeeze. 

I let go of her hand and ran down an abbreviated version of the rehabplans, leaving out anything about Debra and her ad-hocs. Kim drank itall in greedily. She cocked her head at me as I ran it down, eyes wide. It was disconcerting, and I finally asked, "Are you recording this?"

Kim blushed. "I hope that's okay! I'm starting a new Mansion scrapbook. I have one for every ride in the Park, but this one's gonna be a world-beater!"

Here was something I hadn't thought about. Publishing ad-hoc businesswas tabu inside Park, so much so that it hadn't occurred to me that thenew castmembers we brought in would want to record every little detailand push it out over the Net as a big old Whuffie collector. 

"I can switch it off, " Kim said. She looked worried, and I reallystarted to grasp how important the Mansion was to the people we wererecruiting, how much of a privilege we were offering them. 

"Leave it rolling, " I said. "Let's show the world how it's done. "

We led Kim into a utilidor and down to costuming. She was half-naked bythe time we got there, literally tearing off her clothes in anticipationof getting into character. Sonya, a Liberty Square ad-hoc that we'dstashed at costuming, already had clothes waiting for her, a rottingmaid's uniform with an oversized toolbelt. 

We left Kim on the scaffolding, energetically troweling a water-basedcement substitute onto the wall, scraping it off and moving to a newspot. It looked boring to me, but I could believe that we'd have to tearher away when the time came. 

We went back to trawling the Net for the next candidate. 

#

By lunchtime, there were ten drilling, hammering, troweling newcastmembers around the scaffolding, pushing black wheelbarrows, singing"Grim Grinning Ghosts" and generally having a high old time. 

"This'll do, " I said to Dan. I was exhausted and soaked with sweat, andthe transdermal under my costume itched. Despite the happy-juice in mybloodstream, a streak of uncastmemberly crankiness was shot through mymood. I needed to get offstage. 

Dan helped me hobble away, and as we hit the utilidor, he whispered inmy ear, "This was a great idea, Julius. Really. "

We jumped a tram over to Imagineering, my chest swollen with pride. Suneep had three of his assistants working on the first generation ofmobile telepresence robots for the exterior, and had promised aprototype for that afternoon. The robots were easy enough -- just off-the-shelf stuff, really -- but the costumes and kinematics routines weresomething else. Thinking about what he and Suneep's gang ofhypercreative super-geniuses would come up with cheered me up a little, as did being out of the public eye. 

Suneep's lab looked like it had been hit by a tornado. Imagineer packsrolled in and out with arcane gizmos, or formed tight argumentativeknots in the corners as they shouted over whatever their HUDs weredisplaying. In the middle of it all was Suneep, who looked like he wasbarely restraining an urge to shout Yippee! He was clearly in hiselement. 

He threw his arms open when he caught sight of Dan and me, threw themwide enough to embrace the whole mad, gibbering chaos. "What wonderfulflumgubbery!" he shouted, over the noise. 

"Sure is, " I agreed. "How's the prototype coming?"

Suneep waved absently, his short fingers describing trivialities in theair. "In due time, in due time. I've put that team onto something else, a kinematics routine for a class of flying spooks that use gasbags tostay aloft -- silent and scary. It's old spy-tech, and the retrofit'scoming tremendously. Take a look!" He pointed a finger at me and, presumably, squirted some data my way. 

"I'm offline, " I reminded him gently. 

He slapped his forehead, took a moment to push his hair off his face, and gave me an apologetic wave. "Of course, of course. Here. " Heunrolled an LCD and handed it to me. A flock of spooks danced on thescreen, rendered against the ballroom scene. They were thematicallyconsistent with the existing Mansion ghosts, more funny than scary, andtheir faces were familiar. I looked around the lab and realized thatthey'd caricatured various Imagineers. 

"Ah! You noticed, " Suneep said, rubbing his hands together. "A very goodjoke, yes?"

"This is terrific, " I said, carefully. "But I really need some robots upand running by tomorrow night, Suneep. We discussed this, remember?"Without telepresence robots, my recruiting would be limited to fans likeKim, who lived in the area. I had broader designs than that. 

Suneep looked disappointed. "Of course. We discussed it. I don't like tostop my people when they have good ideas, but there's a time and aplace. I'll put them on it right away. Leave it to me. "

Dan turned to greet someone, and I looked to see who it was. Lil. Ofcourse. She was raccoon-eyed with fatigue, and she reached out for Dan'shand, saw me, and changed her mind. 

"Hi, guys, " she said, with studied casualness. 

"Oh, hello!" said Suneep. He fired his finger at her -- the flyingghosts, I imagined. Lil's eyes rolled up for a moment, then she noddedexhaustedly at him. 

"Very good, " she said. "I just heard from Lisa. She says the indoorcrews are on-schedule. They've got most of the animatronics dismantled, and they're taking down the glass in the Ballroom now. " The Ballroomghost effects were accomplished by means of a giant pane of polishedglass that laterally bisected the room. The Mansion had been builtaround it -- it was too big to take out in one piece. "They say it'll bea couple days before they've got it cut up and ready to remove. "

A pocket of uncomfortable silence descended on us, the roar of theImagineers rushing in to fill it. 

"You must be exhausted, " Dan said, at length. 

"Goddamn right, " I said, at the same moment that Lil said, "I guess Iam. "

We both smiled wanly. Suneep put his arms around Lil's and my shouldersand squeezed. He smelled of an exotic cocktail of industrial lubricant, ozone, and fatigue poisons. 

"You two should go home and give each other a massage, " he said. "You'veearned some rest. "

Dan met my eye and shook his head apologetically. I squirmed out fromunder Suneep's arm and thanked him quietly, then slunk off to theContemporary for a hot tub and a couple hours of sleep. 

#

I came back to the Mansion at sundown. It was cool enough that I took asurface route, costume rolled in a shoulderbag, instead of ridingthrough the clattering, air-conditioned comfort of the utilidors. 

As a freshening breeze blew across me, I suddenly had a craving for_real_ weather, the kind of climate I'd grown up with in Toronto. It wasOctober, for chrissakes, and a lifetime of conditioning told me that itwas May. I stopped and leaned on a bench for a moment and closed myeyes. Unbidden, and with the clarity of a HUD, I saw High Park inToronto, clothed in its autumn colors, fiery reds and oranges, shades ofevergreen and earthy brown. God, I needed a vacation. 

I opened my eyes and realized that I was standing in front of the Hallof Presidents, and that there was a queue ahead of me for it, one thatstretched back and back. I did a quick sum in my head and sucked airbetween my teeth: they had enough people for five or six full houseswaiting here -- easily an hour's wait. The Hall _never_ drew crowds likethis. Debra was working the turnstiles in Betsy Ross gingham, and shecaught my eye and snapped a nod at me. 

I stalked off to the Mansion. A choir of zombie-shambling new recruitshad formed up in front of the gate, and were groaning their way through"Grim Grinning Ghosts, " with a new call-and-response structure. A smallaudience participated, urged on by the recruits on the scaffolding. 

"Well, at least that's going right, " I muttered to myself. And it was, except that I could see members of the ad-hoc looking on from thesidelines, and the looks weren't kindly. Totally obsessive fans are agood measure of a ride's popularity, but they're kind of a pain in theass, too. They lipsynch the soundtrack, cadge souvenirs and pester youwith smarmy, show-off questions. After a while, even the cheeriestcastmember starts to lose patience, develop an automatic distaste forthem. 

The Liberty Square ad-hocs who were working on the Mansion had beenrailroaded into approving a rehab, press-ganged into working on it, andwere now forced to endure the company of these grandstanding megafans. If I'd been there when it all started -- instead of sleeping! -- Imay've been able to massage their bruised egos, but now I wondered if itwas too late. 

Nothing for it but to do it. I ducked into a utilidor, changed into mycostume and went back onstage. I joined the call-and-responseenthusiastically, walking around to the ad-hocs and getting them to joinin, reluctantly or otherwise. 

By the time the choir retired, sweaty and exhausted, a group of ad-hocswere ready to take their place, and I escorted my recruits to anoffstage break-room. 

#

Suneep didn't deliver the robot prototypes for a week, and told me thatit would be another week before I could have even five production units. Though he didn't say it, I got the sense that his guys were out ofcontrol, so excited by the freedom from ad-hoc oversight that they wererunning wild. Suneep himself was nearly a wreck, nervous and jumpy. Ididn't press it. 

Besides, I had problems of my own. The new recruits were multiplying. Iwas staying on top of the fan response to the rehab from a terminal I'dhad installed in my hotel room. Kim and her local colleagues werefielding millions of hits every day, their Whuffie accumulating asenvious fans around the world logged in to watch their progress on thescaffolding. 

That was all according to plan. What wasn't according to plan was thatthe new recruits were doing their own recruiting, extending invitationsto their net-pals to come on down to Florida, bunk on their sofas andguest-beds, and present themselves to me for active duty. 

The tenth time it happened, I approached Kim in the break-room. Hergorge was working, her eyes tracked invisible words across the middledistance. No doubt she was penning yet another breathless missive aboutthe magic of working in the Mansion. "Hey, there, " I said. "Have you gota minute to meet with me?"

She held up a single finger, then, a moment later, gave me a brightsmile. 

"Hi, Julius!" she said. "Sure!"

"Why don't you change into civvies, we'll take a walk through the Parkand talk?"

Kim wore her costume every chance she got. I'd been quite firm about herturning it in to the laundry every night instead of wearing it home. 

Reluctantly, she stepped into a change-room and switched into her cowl. We took the utilidor to the Fantasyland exit and walked through thelate-afternoon rush of children and their adults, queued deep and thickfor Snow White, Dumbo and Peter Pan. 

"How're you liking it here?" I asked. 

Kim gave a little bounce. "Oh, Julius, it's the best time of my life, really! A dream come true. I'm meeting so many interesting people, andI'm really feeling creative. I can't wait to try out the telepresencerigs, too. "

"Well, I'm really pleased with what you and your friends are up to here. You're working hard, putting on a good show. I like the songs you'vebeen working up, too. "

She did one of those double-kneed shuffles that was the basis of anynumber of action vids those days and she was suddenly standing in frontof me, hand on my shoulder, looking into my eyes. She looked serious. 

"Is there a problem, Julius? If there is, I'd rather we just talkedabout 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 withyou. The people you-all have been bringing down to work for me, they'reall really great castmembers. "

"But?"

"But we have limited resources around here. Not enough hours in the dayfor me to stay on top of the new folks, the rehab, everything. Not tomention that until we open the new Mansion, there's a limited number ofextras we can use out front. I'm concerned that we're going to putsomeone on stage without proper training, or that we're going to run outof uniforms; I'm also concerned about people coming all the way here anddiscovering 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'vebeen talking to Debra, over at the Hall of Presidents, and she says shecan pick up any people who can't be used at the Mansion -- we could evenrotate back and forth!" She was clearly proud of her foresight. 

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

"Oh, I don't think it'll come to that, " I said, carefully. "I'm sure wecan 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 broughtme back to reality, and I started planning costume production, trainingrosters, 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 isalready upset that all the glory is going to the new people, they'llnever let us bring more in. They also won't stop working on the rehab totrain them, costume them, feed them and mother them. They're losingWhuffie every day that the Mansion's shut up, and they don't want anymore delays. Dave's already joined up with Debra, and I'm sure he's notthe last one. "

Dave -- the jerk who'd pissed all over the rehab in the meeting. Ofcourse he'd gone over. Lil and Dan stood side by side on the porch ofthe house where I'd lived. I'd driven out that night to convince Lil tosell the ad-hocs on bringing in more recruits, but it wasn't goingaccording 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 -- youmanage her. Take some goddamn responsibility for once in your life. "

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

"Debra's doing real well, " he said. "The net's all over her. Biggestthing ever. Flash-baking is taking off in nightclubs, dance mixes withthe 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 aproblem I didn't need, and maybe a problem I could solve. I pulled ascreeching U-turn and drove the little runabout to her place, a tinycondo 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, faintconversation audible through the screen door. I jogged up the steps twoat a time, and was about to knock when a familiar voice drifted throughthe screen. 

Debra, saying: "Oh yes, oh yes! Terrific idea! I'd never really thoughtabout using streetmosphere players to liven up the queue area, butyou'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 forthe Hall any day!"

I heard Kim and her young friends chatting excitedly, proudly. The angerand fear suffused me from tip to toe, and I felt suddenly light and cooland 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 slippedin through the cast entrance using the ID card I'd scored when mysystems went offline and I was no longer able to squirt my authorizationat the door. 

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

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

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

The primary broadcast units were hidden behind a painted scrim over thestage, and they were surprisingly well built for a first generationtech. I really worked up a sweat smashing them, but I kept at it untilnot a single component remained recognizable. The work was slow and loudin the silent Park, but it lulled me into a sleepy reverie, anautohypnotic swing-bang-swing-bang timeless time. To be on the safeside, I grabbed the storage units and slipped them into the cowl. 

Locating their backup units was a little trickier, but years of hangingout at the Hall of Presidents while Lil tinkered with the animatronicshelped me. I methodically investigated every nook, cranny and storagearea 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 aprototype for the next generation or notes that would help themreconstruct the units I'd smashed. 

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

I made my way clean out of the Park without being spotted, and sloshedmy 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 forMachiavellian shenanigans, and I left a trail a mile wide, from themuddy footprints in the Contemporary's lobby to the wrecking barthoughtlessly left behind, with my cowl and the storage units from theHall, 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 LibertySquare, half an hour before the Park opened. 

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

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

I ran. 

I ran past them, along the road to Adventureland, past the Tiki Roomwhere I'd been killed, past the Adventureland gate where I'd wadedthrough the moat, down Main Street. I ran and ran, elbowing earlyguests, trampling flowers, knocking over an apple cart across from thePenny Arcade. 

I ran until I reached the main gate, and turned, thinking I'd outrun Liland 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 aweapon, and she brandished it at me. 

"You're a goddamn idiot, you know that?" she said. I think if we'd beenalone, 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. Thead-hoc's meeting in Adventureland. You're coming. "

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

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

"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'tyou see how _wrong_ that is?"

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

I barked a humorless laugh. Guests were starting to stream into thenow-open Park, and several of them were watching intently as the threecostumed castmembers shouted at each other. I could feel my Whuffiehemorrhaging. "Debra, you are purely full of shit, and your work istrite and unimaginative. You're a fucking despoiler and you don't evenhave the guts to admit it. "

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

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

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

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

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

It was SRO in the meeting room, packed to the gills with the entiread-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 therestaurant crews were there. Liberty Square must've been a ghost town. It gave the meeting a sense of urgency: the knowledge that there wereguests in Liberty Square wandering aimlessly, looking for castmembers tohelp 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 thatI was in deep shit. Even Dan, sitting in the front row, looked angry. Inearly 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 todeath 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 allhave important work to get to. I'll run down the facts: last night, amember of this ad-hoc vandalized the Hall of Presidents, rendering ituseless. It's estimated that it will take at least a week to get it backup and running. 

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

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

There were nods in the audience. Lil wouldn't be the only one working atthe Hall that week. "Disney World isn't a competition, " Lil said. "Allthe different ad-hocs work together, and we do it to make the Park asgood 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 calmlyas I could manage. 

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

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 nothave been the smartest thing I've ever done, but I think you all shouldunderstand how I was driven to it. 

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

"Usually, the lie that we're all on the same side is fine. It lets uswork together in peace. But that changed the day they had me shot. Ifyou keep on believing it, you're going to lose the Mansion, the LibertyBelle, Tom Sawyer Island -- all of it. All the history we have with thisplace -- all the history that the billions who've visited it have --it's going to be destroyed and replaced with the sterile, thoughtlessshit that's taken over the Hall. Once that happens, there's nothing leftthat makes this place special. Anyone can get the same experiencesitting at home on the sofa! What happens then, huh? How much longer doyou 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 wasmy work that was destroyed last night, I think I would like to addressJulius's statements, if you don't mind. " She paused, but no one spokeup. 

"First of all, I want you all to know that we don't hold you responsiblefor what happened last night. We know who was responsible, and he needshelp. 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 sameside -- the side of the Park. This is a special place, and it couldn'texist without all of our contributions. What happened to Julius wasterrible, and I sincerely hope that the person responsible is caught andbrought to justice. But that person wasn't me or any of the people in myad-hoc. 

"Lil, I'd like to thank you for your generous offer of assistance, andwe'll take you up on it. That goes for all of you -- come on by theHall, 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 ofthe Mansion. It is a terrific attraction, and it's getting better withthe work you're all doing. If you've been worrying about it, then youcan 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 gotwork to do, too. I'd like to ask you all a favor, first. I'd like us tokeep the details of last night's incident to ourselves. Letting theguests and the world know about this ugly business isn't good foranyone. 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 myterminal. Lil had made it very clear to me after the meeting that Iwasn't to show my face inside the Park until I'd "gotten help, " whateverthat meant. 

By noon, the news was out. It was hard to pin down the exact source, butit seemed to revolve around the new recruits. One of them had told theirnet-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 andleaving Walt Disney World to start yet another new life, Whuffie-poorand 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'dbeen 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. Itwas cramped and dull, but my access to the network was free and I hadplenty of material to entertain myself. While I couldn't get a table ina restaurant, I was free to queue up at any of the makers around townand 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 alife of unparalleled luxury. 

Even by the standards of the Bitchun Society, I was hardly a rarity. Thenumber of low-esteem individuals at large was significant, and they gotalong 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, arare high-net-Whuffie individual who was willing to fraternize with ashmuck like me. He'd stand me to meals at sidewalk cafes and concerts atthe SkyDome, and shoot down any snotty reputation-punk who sneered at myWhuffie tally. Being with Dan was a process of constantly reevaluatingmy 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, startedover. I could have turned my back on Dan, on Debra, on Lil and the wholemess. 

I didn't. 

I called up the doc. 

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

Doctor Pete answered on the third ring, audio-only. In the background, Iheard a chorus of crying children, the constant backdrop of the MagicKingdom infirmary. 

"Hi, doc, " I said. 

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

_Make it all good again_. "I'm not really sure. I wanted to see if Icould 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 thinkso -- 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 gotimportant 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 meetme? I can't really come to you. I'm at the Contemporary, Tower B, room2334. "

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

"I know, I know. " I hated how pathetic I sounded. "Can you make anexception? 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 forme. 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 -- Idon'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 ofSpace Mountain. To my left spread the sparkling waters of the Seven SeasLagoon, to my right, the Property stretched away for mile aftermanicured mile. The sun was warm on my skin, faint strains of happylaughter drifted with the wind, and the flowers were in bloom. InToronto, it would be freezing rain, gray buildings, noisome rapidtransit (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 bothstared 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 comesby, Julius. "

"Go ahead. "

"Lil and I are through. It should never have happened in the firstplace, and I'm not proud of myself. If you two were breaking up, that'snone 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 waitedexpectantly. 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 rehearsedthe speech, but it still wasn't easy to choke out. 

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

"I can't do it, " I said, not meeting his eye. "I just can't -- isn'tthere 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'ttake 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 thisclone 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 loseall this. " I couldn't admit my real reasons for being so attached tothis singularly miserable chapter in my life, not even to myself. 

The doctor rose to go. "Look, Julius, you haven't got the Whuffie tomake 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 filethat you're stroke-prone -- and you're going to get refreshed from yourbackup. The longer you wait, the more traumatic it'll be. You're robbingfrom your future self for your selfish present. "

It wasn't the first time the thought had crossed my mind. Every passingday made it harder to take the cure. To lie down and wake up friendswith Dan, to wake up and be in love with Lil again. To wake up to aMansion the way I remembered it, a Hall of Presidents where I could findLil bent over with her head in a President's guts of an afternoon. Tolie down and wake without disgrace, without knowing that my lover and mybest 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 frommy 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'recomplications. 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 donethat without coming out here. Please don't call me anymore. "

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

"Us old-timers, we're used to thinking of doctors as highly trainedprofessionals -- all that pre-Bitchun med-school stuff, longinternships, anatomy drills. . . Truth is, the average doc today gets moretraining in bedside manner than bioscience. 'Doctor' Pete is atechnician, not an MD, not the way you and I mean it. Anyone with thekind of knowledge you're looking for is working as a historicalresearcher, not a doctor. 

"But that's not the illusion. The doc is supposed to be the authority onmedical matters, even though he's only got one trick: restore frombackup. You're reminding Pete of that, and he's not happy to have ithappen. "

#

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

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

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

At least, that was the plan. When I got down to the Contemporary'sparking lot, my runabout was gone. A quick check with the handheldrevealed the worst: my Whuffie was low enough that someone had justgotten inside and driven away, realizing that they could make morepopular use of it than I could. 

With a sinking feeling, I trudged up to my room and swiped my keythrough the lock. It emitted a soft, unsatisfied _bzzz_ and lit up, "Please see the front desk. " My room had been reassigned, too. I had theshort 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 oneoffered me an inch more personal space than was necessary. I had hitbottom. 

#

I took the castmember entrance to the Magic Kingdom, clipping my nametag to my Disney Operations polo shirt, ignoring the glares of my fellowcastmembers in the utilidors. 

I used the handheld to page Dan. "Hey there, " he said, brightly. I couldtell 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 someWhuffie manually. Debra was spiked so high it seemed she'd never comedown, as were Tim and her whole crew in aggregate. They were drawingfrom guests by the millions, and from castmembers and from people who'dread the popular accounts of their struggle against the forces of pettyjealousy and sabotage -- i. E. , me. 

I felt light-headed. I hurried along to costuming and changed into theheavy 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, andpatted the bench next to him. I sat with him and sipped, waiting for himto spill whatever bit of rotten news he had for me this morning -- Icould feel it hovering like storm clouds. 

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

"Have you taken a look at Debra's Whuffie lately?" he asked, finally, aswe 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'tbother, " he said, morosely. "Suffice it to say, Debra's gang is numberone with a bullet. Ever since word got out about what happened to theHall, 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 isit they've done, Dan?" I asked, already knowing the answer. 

Dan didn't have to respond, because at that moment, Tim emerged from theMansion, wearing a light cotton work-smock. He had a thoughtfulexpression, 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'tyou run it down?"

"Well, it's pretty radical, I have to admit. We've learned some stufffrom the Hall that we wanted to apply, and at the same time, we wantedto 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 anidea, Julius -- but we're giving each one an uplink so that it canflash-bake. We've got some high-Whuffie horror writers pulling togethera series of narratives about the lives of each ghost: how they met theirtragic ends, what they've done since, you know. 

"The way we've storyboarded it, the guests stream through the ridepretty much the way they do now, walking through the preshow and thengetting into the ride-vehicles, the Doom Buggies. But here's the bigchange: 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 beingchased by these ghosts, these telepresence robots, and they're reallyscary -- I've got Suneep's concept artists going back to the drawingboard, hitting basic research on stuff that'll just scare the guestssilly. When a ghost catches you, lays its hands on you -- wham! Flash-bake! You get its whole grisly story in three seconds, across yourfrontal 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 allnew stories. The way that the Hall's drawing 'em, we're bound to be ahit. " He put his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels, clearlyproud of himself. 

When Epcot Center first opened, long, long ago, there'd been an uglydecade or so in ride design. Imagineering found a winning formula forSpaceship Earth, the flagship ride in the big golf ball, and, in theirdrive to establish thematic continuity, they'd turned the formula into acookie-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 modernage. Who knows what the future holds? We do! We'll all have videophonesand be living on the ocean floor. Once was cute -- compelling andinspirational, even -- but six times was embarrassing. Like everyone, once Imagineering got themselves a good hammer, everything started toresemble a nail. Even now, the Epcot ad-hocs were repeating the sins oftheir forebears, closing every ride with a scene of Bitchun utopia. 

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

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

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

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 Debrayesterday and asked her to do a design review of the current rehab andsuggest any changes. She was good enough to agree, and they've come upwith some great ideas. " I read between the lines: the newbies youinvited in have gone over to the other side and we're going to loseeverything because of them. I felt like shit. 

"Well, I stand corrected, " I said, carefully. Tim's grin came back andhe 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 spedtowards Suneep's lab, jangling our bells at the rushing castmembers. "They don't have the authority to invite Debra in, " I panted as wepedaled. 

"Says who?" Dan said. 

"It was part of the deal -- they knew that they were probationarymembers right from the start. They weren't even allowed into the designmeetings. "

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

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

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

He harrumphed. "We had a deal, Julius, " he said, hotly. "I would do therehab for you and you would keep the ad-hocs off my back. I've beenholding up my end of the bargain, but where the hell have you been? Ifthey replan the rehab now, I'll _have_ to go along with them. I can'tjust leave the Mansion half-done -- they'll murder me. "

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

Dan gave me one of his long, considering looks, then nodded a minuteapproval. "Yeah, " he drawled. "That'll help all right. Just tell 'emthat 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 todo it, and that person gets all the credit for the work my team's doneso far. I just flush my time down the toilet. "

"It won't come to that, " I said quickly. "If you can just keep saying nofor 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. "Allright, " 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 Danexhorted. 

"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 noright to move in on you -- you've got all the Whuffie you need to defendthe place, if you all work together. "

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

When Lil had arrived, she'd sized up the situation with a sourexpression: sit in the front, near Dan, or in the back, near me. She'dchosen the middle, and to concentrate on Dan I had to tear my eyes awayfrom 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 claimthey've got your support!"

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

"No, " the castmember said. 

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

"No!" the castmember said, his voice unnaturally loud after thewhispers. 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 onwith the plan, send them packing. They're only taking over becauseyou'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-hocthey're displacing doesn't have a hope of fighting back. 

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

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

It was the second year of my undergrad, taking a double-major in notmaking trouble for my profs and keeping my mouth shut. It was the earlydays of Bitchun, and most of us were still a little unclear on theconcept. 

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

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

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

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

"Come on, heads up! This is _not_ a drill. The University of TorontoDepartment of Sociology is under new management. If you'll set yourhandhelds to 'receive, ' we'll be beaming out new lesson-plansmomentarily. If you've forgotten your handhelds, you can download theplans 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'llprobably 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 SociologyDepartment is _in charge_. We promise high-relevance curriculum with anemphasis on reputation economies, post-scarcity social dynamics, and thesocial theory of infinite life-extension. No more Durkheim, kids, justdeadheading! This will be _fun_. "

She taught the course like a pro -- you could tell she'd been drillingher lecture for a while. Periodically, the human wall behind hershuddered 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 herevery word. Instead of trudging out and ambling to our next class, thewhole nineteen hundred of us rose, and, as one, started buzzing to ourneighbors, a roar of "Can you believe it?" that followed us out the doorand to our next encounter with the Ad-Hoc Sociology Department. 

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

Reporters pounced on us when we left the class, jabbing at us with micsand 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 thenewscast as I brushed my teeth: the Dean of the Department of Sociologytold a reporter that the ad-hocs' courses would not be credited, thatthey were a gang of thugs who were totally unqualified to teach. Acounterpoint interview from a spokesperson for the ad-hocs establishedthat all of the new lecturers had been writing course-plans and lecturenotes for the profs they replaced for years, and that they'd alsowritten most of their journal articles. 

The profs brought University security out to help them regain theirlecterns, only to be repelled by ad-hoc security guards in homemadeuniforms. University security got the message -- anyone could bereplaced -- 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'tcount towards their degrees. Fools like me alternated between theoutdoor 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. Thead-hocs spent their time badmouthing the profs and tearing apart theircoursework. 

At the end of the semester, everyone got a credit and the UniversitySenate disbanded the Sociology program in favor of a distance-edoffering from Concordia in Montreal. Forty years later, the fight wassettled forever. Once you took backup-and-restore, the rest of theBitchunry 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 theutilidors and, as a mass, took back the Haunted Mansion. Dan, Lil and Iwere up front, careful not to brush against one another as we walkedquickly through the backstage door and started a bucket-brigade, passingout the materials that Debra's people had stashed there, along a linethat snaked back to the front porch of the Hall of Presidents, wherethey were unceremoniously dumped. 

Once the main stash was vacated, we split up and roamed the ride, itsservice 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 littlefriends, their eyes glinting in the dim light. The gaggle of transhumankids made my guts clench, made me think of Zed and of Lil and of myunmediated 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 wasours, not punishing the interlopers. "Kim, I think you should leave, " Isaid, quietly. 

She snorted and gave me a dire look. "Who died and made you boss?" shesaid. 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, theworse it will be for you and your Whuffie. You blew it, and you're not apart of the Mansion anymore. Go home, go to Debra. Don't stay here, anddon'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 hadlots of new material to post to the anti-me sites, messages that wouldget them Whuffie with people who thought I was the scum of the earth. Apopular view, those days. 

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

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

#

By evening, we were back on schedule. Suneep supervised the placement ofhis 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 inthe parlor. 

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

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

"Your partners, they're happier than I've seen them since this wholebusiness 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 ofme said that Dan would never go back to her, not after all we'd beenthrough together. 

"I'm glad you're glad. We couldn't have done it without you, and itlooks 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. Iwould 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 nointention 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 theparlor. Festive voices, happy and loud, and I assumed it was LibertySquare 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. Igot ready to shout something horrible at them, and that's when Debracame 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 theircanopic jars in Kissimmee. 

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

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

Tom and I stood awkwardly to the side while Lil and her mother held anachingly 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. Whenthey woke, this event -- everything following the backup -- would neverhave 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. Whenthings look interesting enough, we'll come on back. " He waggled a fingerat me. "I'll be keeping an eye on you and Lillian -- you treat herright, 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 yourworld now -- we're just getting out of the way for a while, lettingyou-all take a run at it. We wouldn't be going down if we didn't havefaith in you two. "

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

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

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

#

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

"Just what the hell do you think you're doing?" Rita asked, shoving mehard 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. Youractions are totally indefensible. Keep your mouth shut and go away. "

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

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

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

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

We stared at each other across the dim parlor. Debra made a twiddlingmotion and the lights came up full and harsh. The expertly crafted gloomwent away and it was just a dusty room with a fake fireplace. 

"Let him speak, " Debra said. Rita folded her arms and glared. 

"I did some really awful things, " I said, keeping my head up, keeping myeyes on them. "I can't excuse them, and I don't ask you to forgive them. But that doesn't change the fact that we've put our hearts and soulsinto this place, and it's not right to take it from us. Can't we haveone constant corner of the world, one bit frozen in time for the peoplewho love it that way? Why does your success mean our failure?

"Can't you see that we're carrying on your work? That we're tending alegacy you left us?"

"Are you through?" Rita asked. 

I nodded. 

"This place is not a historical preserve, Julius, it's a ride. If youdon't understand that, you're in the wrong place. It's not my goddamnfault that you decided that your stupidity was on my behalf, and itdoesn't make it any less stupid. All you've done is confirm my worstfears. "

Debra's mask of impartiality slipped. "You stupid, deluded asshole, " shesaid, softly. "You totter around, pissing and moaning about your littlemurder, your little health problems -- yes, I've heard -- your littlefixation on keeping things the way they are. You need some perspective, Julius. You need to get away from here: Disney World isn't good for youand you're sure as hell not any good for Disney World. "

It would have hurt less if I hadn't come to the same conclusion myself, somewhere along the way. 

#

I found the ad-hoc at a Fort Wilderness campsite, sitting around a fireand singing, necking, laughing. The victory party. I trudged into thecircle and hunted for Lil. 

She was sitting on a log, staring into the fire, a million miles away. Lord, she was beautiful when she fretted. I stood in front of her for aminute and she stared right through me until I tapped her shoulder. Shegave an involuntary squeak and then smiled at herself. 

"Lil, " I said, then stopped. _Your parents are home, and they've joinedthe other side_. 

For the first time in an age, she looked at me softly, smiled even. Shepatted the log next to her. I sat down, felt the heat of the fire on myface, her body heat on my side. God, how did I screw this up?

Without warning, she put her arms around me and hugged me hard. I huggedher back, nose in her hair, woodsmoke smell and shampoo and sweat. "Wedid it, " she whispered fiercely. I held onto her. _No, we didn't_. 

"Lil, " I said again, and pulled away. 

"What?" she said, her eyes shining. She was stoned, I saw that now. 

"Your parents are back. They came to the Mansion. "

She was confused, shrinking, and I pressed on. 

"They were with Debra. "

She reeled back as if I'd slapped her. 

"I told them I'd bring the whole group back to talk it over. "

She hung her head and her shoulders shook, and I tentatively put an armaround her. She shook it off and sat up. She was crying and laughing atthe same time. "I'll have a ferry sent over, " she said. 

#

I sat in the back of the ferry with Dan, away from the confused andangry ad-hocs. I answered his questions with terse, one-word answers, and he gave up. We rode in silence, the trees on the edges of the SevenSeas Lagoon whipping back and forth in an approaching storm. 

The ad-hoc shortcutted through the west parking lot and moved throughthe quiet streets of Frontierland apprehensively, a funeral processionthat stopped the nighttime custodial staff in their tracks. 

As we drew up on Liberty Square, I saw that the work-lights were blazingand a tremendous work-gang of Debra's ad-hocs were moving from the Hallto the Mansion, undoing our teardown of their work. 

Working alongside of them were Tom and Rita, Lil's parents, sleevesrolled up, forearms bulging with new, toned muscle. The group stopped inits tracks and Lil went to them, stumbling on the wooden sidewalk. 

I expected hugs. There were none. In their stead, parents and daughterstalked each other, shifting weight and posture to track each other, maintain a constant, sizing distance. 

"What the hell are you doing?" Lil said, finally. She didn't address hermother, which surprised me. It didn't surprise Tom, though. 

He dipped forward, the shuffle of his feet loud in the quiet night. "We're working, " he said. 

"No, you're not, " Lil said. "You're destroying. Stop it. "

Lil's mother darted to her husband's side, not saying anything, juststanding there. 

Wordlessly, Tom hefted the box he was holding and headed to the Mansion. Lil caught his arm and jerked it so he dropped his load. 

"You're not listening. The Mansion is _ours_. _Stop_. _It_. "

Lil's mother gently took Lil's hand off Tom's arm, held it in her own. "I'm glad you're passionate about it, Lillian, " she said. "I'm proud ofyour commitment. "

Even at a distance of ten yards, I heard Lil's choked sob, saw hercollapse in on herself. Her mother took her in her arms, rocked her. Ifelt like a voyeur, but couldn't bring myself to turn away. 

"Shhh, " her mother said, a sibilant sound that matched the rustling ofthe leaves on the Liberty Tree. "Shhh. We don't have to be on the sameside, you know. "

They held the embrace and held it still. Lil straightened, then bentagain and picked up her father's box, carried it to the Mansion. One ata time, the rest of her ad-hoc moved forward and joined them. 

#

This is how you hit bottom. You wake up in your friend's hotel room andyou power up your handheld and it won't log on. You press the call-button for the elevator and it gives you an angry buzz in return. Youtake the stairs to the lobby and no one looks at you as they jostle pastyou. 

You become a non-person. 

Scared. I trembled when I ascended the stairs to Dan's room, when Iknocked at his door, louder and harder than I meant, a panicked banging. 

Dan answered the door and I saw his eyes go to his HUD, back to me. "Jesus, " he said. 

I sat on the edge of my bed, head in my hands. 

"What?" I said, what happened, what happened to me?

"You're out of the ad-hoc, " he said. "You're out of Whuffie. You'rebottomed-out, " he said. 

This is how you hit bottom in Walt Disney World, in a hotel with thehissing of the monorail and the sun streaming through the window, thehooting of the steam engines on the railroad and the distant howl of therecorded wolves at the Haunted Mansion. The world drops away from you, recedes until you're nothing but a speck, a mote in blackness. 

I was hyperventilating, light-headed. Deliberately, I slowed my breath, put my head between my knees until the dizziness passed. 

"Take me to Lil, " I said. 

Driving together, hammering cigarette after cigarette into my face, Iremembered the night Dan had come to Disney World, when I'd driven himto my -- _Lil's_ -- house, and how happy I'd been then, how secure. 

I looked at Dan and he patted my hand. "Strange times, " he said. 

It was enough. We found Lil in an underground break-room, lightly dozingon a ratty sofa. Her head rested on Tom's lap, her feet on Rita's. Allthree snored softly. They'd had a long night. 

Dan shook Lil awake. She stretched out and opened her eyes, lookedsleepily at me. The blood drained from her face. 

"Hello, Julius, " she said, coldly. 

Now Tom and Rita were awake, too. Lil sat up. 

"Were you going to tell me?" I asked, quietly. "Or were you just goingto kick me out and let me find out on my own?"

"You were my next stop, " Lil said. 

"Then I've saved you some time. " I pulled up a chair. "Tell me all aboutit. "

"There's nothing to tell, " Rita snapped. "You're out. You had to know itwas coming -- for God's sake, you were tearing Liberty Square apart!"

"How would you know?" I asked. I struggled to remain calm. "You've beenasleep for ten years!"

"We got updates, " Rita said. "That's why we're back -- we couldn't letit go on the way it was. We owed it to Debra. "

"And Lillian, " Tom said. 

"And Lillian, " Rita said, absently. 

Dan pulled up a chair of his own. "You're not being fair to him, " hesaid. At least someone was on my side. 

"We've been more than fair, " Lil said. "You know that better thananyone, Dan. We've forgiven and forgiven and forgiven, made everyallowance. He's sick and he won't take the cure. There's nothing more wecan do for him. "

"You could be his friend, " Dan said. The light-headedness was back, andI slumped in my chair, tried to control my breathing, the panickedthumping of my heart. 

"You could try to understand, you could try to help him. You could stickwith him, the way he stuck with you. You don't have to toss him out onhis ass. "

Lil had the good grace to look slightly shamed. "I'll get him a room, "she said. "For a month. In Kissimmee. A motel. I'll pick up his networkaccess. Is that fair?"

"It's more than fair, " Rita said. Why did she hate me so much? I'd beenthere for her daughter while she was away -- ah. That might do it, allright. "I don't think it's warranted. If you want to take care of him, sir, you can. It's none of my family's business. "

Lil's eyes blazed. "Let me handle this, " she said. "All right?"

Rita stood up abruptly. "You do whatever you want, " she said, andstormed out of the room. 

"Why are you coming here for help?" Tom said, ever the voice of reason. "You seem capable enough. "

"I'm going to be taking a lethal injection at the end of the week, " Dansaid. "Three days. That's personal, but you asked. "

Tom shook his head. _Some friends you've got yourself_, I could see himthinking it. 

"That soon?" Lil asked, a throb in her voice. 

Dan nodded. 

In a dreamlike buzz, I stood and wandered out into the utilidor, outthrough the western castmember parking, and away. 

I wandered along the cobbled, disused Walk Around the World, eachflagstone engraved with the name of a family that had visited the Park acentury before. The names whipped past me like epitaphs. 

The sun came up noon high as I rounded the bend of deserted beachbetween the Grand Floridian and the Polynesian. Lil and I had come hereoften, to watch the sunset from a hammock, arms around each other, thePark spread out before us like a lighted toy village. 

Now the beach was deserted, the Wedding Pavilion silent. I felt suddenlycold though I was sweating freely. So cold. 

Dreamlike, I walked into the lake, water filling my shoes, logging mypants, warm as blood, warm on my chest, on my chin, on my mouth, on myeyes. 

I opened my mouth and inhaled deeply, water filling my lungs, chokingand warm. At first I sputtered, but I was in control now, and I inhaledagain. The water shimmered over my eyes, and then was dark. 

#

I woke on Doctor Pete's cot in the Magic Kingdom, restraints around mywrists and ankles, a tube in my nose. I closed my eyes, for a momentbelieving that I'd been restored from a backup, problems solved, memories behind me. 

Sorrow knifed through me as I realized that Dan was probably dead bynow, my memories of him gone forever. 

Gradually, I realized that I was thinking nonsensically. The fact that Iremembered Dan meant that I hadn't been refreshed from my backup, thatmy broken brain was still there, churning along in unmediated isolation. 

I coughed again. My ribs ached and throbbed in counterpoint to my head. Dan took my hand. 

"You're a pain in the ass, you know that?" he said, smiling. 

"Sorry, " I choked. 

"You sure are, " he said. "Lucky for you they found you -- another minuteor two and I'd be burying you right now. "

_No_, I thought, confused. _They'd have restored me from backup_. Thenit hit me: I'd gone on record refusing restore from backup after havingit recommended by a medical professional. No one would have restored meafter that. I would have been truly and finally dead. I started toshiver. 

"Easy, " Dan said. "Easy. It's all right now. Doctor says you've got acracked rib or two from the CPR, but there's no brain damage. "

"No _additional_ brain damage, " Doctor Pete said, swimming into view. Hehad on his professionally calm bedside face, and it reassured me despitemyself. 

He shooed Dan away and took his seat. Once Dan had left the room, heshone lights in my eyes and peeked in my ears, then sat back andconsidered me. "Well, Julius, " he said. "What exactly is the problem? Wecan get you a lethal injection if that's what you want, but offingyourself in the Seven Seas Lagoon just isn't good show. In the meantime, would you like to talk about it?"

Part of me wanted to spit in his eye. I'd tried to talk about it andhe'd told me to go to hell, and now he changes his mind? But I did wantto talk. 

"I didn't want to die, " I said. 

"Oh no?" he said. "I think the evidence suggests the contrary. "

"I wasn't trying to die, " I protested. "I was trying to --" What? I wastrying to. . . _abdicate_. Take the refresh without choosing it, withoutshutting out the last year of my best friend's life. Rescue myself fromthe stinking pit I'd sunk into without flushing Dan away along with it. That's all, that's all. 

"I wasn't thinking -- I was just acting. It was an episode or something. Does that mean I'm nuts?"

"Oh, probably, " Doctor Pete said, offhandedly. "But let's worry aboutone thing at a time. You can die if you want to, that's your right. I'drather you lived, if you want my opinion, and I doubt that I'm the onlyone, Whuffie be damned. If you're going to live, I'd like to record yousaying so, just in case. We have a backup of you on file -- I'd hate tohave to delete it. "

"Yes, " I said. "Yes, I'd like to be restored if there's no otheroption. " It was true. I didn't want to die. 

"All right then, " Doctor Pete said. "It's on file and I'm a happy man. Now, are you nuts? Probably. A little. Nothing a little counseling andsome R&R wouldn't fix, if you want my opinion. I could find yousomewhere if you want. "

"Not yet, " I said. "I appreciate the offer, but there's something else Ihave to do first. "

#

Dan took me back to the room and put me to bed with a transdermalsoporific that knocked me out for the rest of the day. When I woke, themoon was over the Seven Seas Lagoon and the monorail was silent. 

I stood on the patio for a while, thinking about all the things thisplace had meant to me for more than a century: happiness, security, efficiency, fantasy. All of it gone. It was time I left. Maybe back tospace, find Zed and see if I could make her happy again. Anywhere buthere. Once Dan was dead -- God, it was sinking in finally -- I couldcatch a ride down to the Cape for a launch. 

"What's on your mind?" Dan asked from behind me, startling me. He was inhis boxers, thin and rangy and hairy. 

"Thinking about moving on, " I said. 

He chuckled. "I've been thinking about doing the same, " he said. 

I smiled. "Not that way, " I said. "Just going somewhere else, startingover. Getting away from this. "

"Going to take the refresh?" he asked. 

I looked away. "No, " I said. "I don't believe I will. "

"It may be none of my business, " he said, "but why the fuck not? Jesus, Julius, what're you afraid of?"

"You don't want to know, " I said. 

"I'll be the judge of that. "

"Let's have a drink, first, " I said. 

Dan rolled his eyes back for a second, then said, "All right, twoCoronas, coming up. "

After the room-service bot had left, we cracked the beers and pulledchairs out onto the porch. 

"You sure you want to know this?" I asked. 

He tipped his bottle at me. "Sure as shootin', " he said. 

"I don't want refresh because it would mean losing the last year, " Isaid. 

He nodded. "By which you mean 'my last year, '" he said. "Right?"

I nodded and drank. 

"I thought it might be like that. Julius, you are many things, but hardto figure out you are not. I have something to say that might help youmake the decision. If you want to hear it, that is. "

What could he have to say? "Sure, " I said. "Sure. " In my mind, I was ona shuttle headed for orbit, away from all of this. 

"I had you killed, " he said. "Debra asked me to, and I set it up. Youwere right all along. "

The shuttle exploded in silent, slow moving space, and I spun away fromit. I opened and shut my mouth. 

It was Dan's turn to look away. "Debra proposed it. We were talkingabout the people I'd met when I was doing my missionary work, the stonecrazies who I'd have to chase away after they'd rejoined the BitchunSociety. One of them, a girl from Cheyenne Mountain, she followed medown here, kept leaving me messages. I told Debra, and that's when shegot the idea. 

"I'd get the girl to shoot you and disappear. Debra would give meWhuffie -- piles of it, and her team would follow suit. I'd be monthscloser to my goal. That was all I could think about back then, youremember. "

"I remember. " The smell of rejuve and desperation in our little cottage, and Dan plotting my death. 

"We planned it, then Debra had herself refreshed from a backup -- nomemory of the event, just the Whuffie for me. "

"Yes, " I said. That would work. Plan a murder, kill yourself, haveyourself refreshed from a backup made before the plan. How many timeshad Debra done terrible things and erased their memories that way?

"Yes, " he agreed. "We did it, I'm ashamed to say. I can prove it, too --I have my backup, and I can get Jeanine to tell it, too. " He drained hisbeer. "That's my plan. Tomorrow. I'll tell Lil and her folks, Kim andher people, the whole ad-hoc. A going-away present from a shittyfriend. "

My throat was dry and tight. I drank more beer. "You knew all along, " Isaid. "You could have proved it at any time. "

He nodded. "That's right. "

"You let me. . . " I groped for the words. "You let me turn into. . . "They wouldn't come. 

"I did, " he said. 

All this time. Lil and he, standing on _my_ porch, telling me I neededhelp. Doctor Pete, telling me I needed refresh from backup, me sayingno, no, no, not wanting to lose my last year with Dan. 

"I've done some pretty shitty things in my day, " he said. "This is theabsolute worst. You helped me and I betrayed you. I'm sure glad I don'tbelieve in God -- that'd make what I'm going to do even scarier. "

Dan was going to kill himself in two days' time. My friend and mymurderer. "Dan, " I croaked. I couldn't make any sense of my mind. Dan, taking care of me, helping me, sticking up for me, carrying thishorrible shame with him all along. Ready to die, wanting to go with aclean conscience. 

"You're forgiven, " I said. And it was true. 

He stood. 

"Where are you going" I asked. 

"To find Jeanine, the one who pulled the trigger. I'll meet you at theHall of Presidents at nine a. M. . "

#

I went in through the Main Gate, not a castmember any longer, a Guestwith barely enough Whuffie to scrape in, use the water fountains andstand in line. If I were lucky, a castmember might spare me a chocolatebanana. Probably not, though. 

I stood in the line for the Hall of Presidents. Other guests checked myWhuffie, then averted their eyes. Even the children. A year before, they'd have been striking up conversations, asking me about my job hereat the Magic Kingdom. 

I sat in my seat at the Hall of Presidents, watching the short film withthe rest, sitting patiently while they rocked in their seats under theblast of the flash-bake. A castmember picked up the stageside mic andthanked everyone for coming; the doors swung open and the Hall wasempty, except for me. The castmember narrowed her eyes at me, thenrecognizing me, turned her back and went to show in the next group. 

No group came. Instead, Dan and the girl I'd seen on the replay entered. 

"We've closed it down for the morning, " he said. 

I was staring at the girl, seeing her smirk as she pulled the trigger onme, seeing her now with a contrite, scared expression. She was terrifiedof me. 

"You must be Jeanine, " I said. I stood and shook her hand. "I'm Julius. "

Her hand was cold, and she took it back and wiped it on her pants. 

My castmember instincts took over. "Please, have a seat. Don't worry, it'll all be fine. Really. No hard feelings. " I stopped short ofoffering to get her a glass of water. 

_Put her at her ease_, said a snotty voice in my head. _She'll make abetter witness. Or make her nervous, pathetic -- that'll work, too; makeDebra look even worse_. 

I told the voice to shut up and got her a cup of water. 

By the time I came back, the whole gang was there. Debra, Lil, herfolks, Tim. Debra's gang and Lil's gang, now one united team. Soon to bescattered. 

Dan took the stage, used the stageside mic to broadcast his voice. "Eleven months ago, I did an awful thing. I plotted with Debra to haveJulius murdered. I used a friend who was a little confused at the time, used her to pull the trigger. It was Debra's idea that having Juliuskilled would cause enough confusion that she could take over the Hall ofPresidents. It was. "

There was a roar of conversation. I looked at Debra, saw that she wassitting calmly, as though Dan had just accused her of sneaking an extrahelping of dessert. Lil's parents, to either side of her, were lesssanguine. Tom's jaw was set and angry, Rita was speaking angrily toDebra. Hickory Jackson in the old Hall used to say, _I will hang thefirst man I can lay hands on from the first tree I can find_. 

"Debra had herself refreshed from backup after we planned it, " Dan wenton, as though no one was talking. "I was supposed to do the same, but Ididn't. I have a backup in my public directory -- anyone can examine it. Right now, I'd like to bring Jeanine up, she's got a few words she'dlike to say. "

I helped Jeanine take the stage. She was still trembling, and thead-hocs were an insensate babble of recriminations. Despite myself, I was enjoying it. 

"Hello, " Jeanine said softly. She had a lovely voice, a lovely face. Iwondered if we could be friends when it was all over. She probablydidn't care much about Whuffie, one way or another. 

The discussion went on. Dan took the mic from her and said, "Please! Canwe have a little respect for our visitor? Please? People?"

Gradually, the din decreased. Dan passed the mic back to Jeanine. "Hello, " she said again, and flinched from the sound of her voice in theHall's PA. "My name is Jeanine. I'm the one who killed Julius, a yearago. Dan asked me to, and I did it. I didn't ask why. I trusted -- trust-- him. He told me that Julius would make a backup a few minutes beforeI shot him, and that he could get me out of the Park without gettingcaught. I'm very sorry. " There was something off-kilter about her, somestilt to her stance and words that let you know she wasn't all there. Growing up in a mountain might do that to you. I snuck a look at Lil, whose lips were pressed together. Growing up in a theme park might dothat to you, too. 

"Thank you, Jeanine, " Dan said, taking back the mic. "You can have aseat now. I've said everything I need to say -- Julius and I have hadour own discussions in private. If there's anyone else who'd like tospeak --"

The words were barely out of his mouth before the crowd erupted again inwords and waving hands. Beside me, Jeanine flinched. I took her hand andshouted in her ear: "Have you ever been on the Pirates of theCarribean?"

She shook her head. 

I stood up and pulled her to her feet. "You'll love it, " I said, and ledher out of the Hall. 

========== CHAPTER 10 ==========

I booked us ringside seats at the Polynesian Luau, riding high on afresh round of sympathy Whuffie, and Dan and I drank a dozen lapu-lapusin hollowed-out pineapples before giving up on the idea of gettingdrunk. 

Jeanine watched the fire-dances and the torch-lighting with eyes likesaucers, and picked daintily at her spare ribs with one hand, neveraverting her attention from the floor show. When they danced the fasthula, her eyes jiggled. I chuckled. 

From where we sat, I could see the spot where I'd waded into the SevenSeas Lagoon and breathed in the blood-temp water, I could seeCinderella's Castle, across the lagoon, I could see the monorails andthe ferries and the busses making their busy way through the Park, shuttling teeming masses of guests from place to place. Dan toasted mewith his pineapple and I toasted him back, drank it dry and belched insatisfaction. 

Full belly, good friends, and the sunset behind a troupe of tawny, half-naked hula dancers. Who needs the Bitchun Society, anyway?

When it was over, we watched the fireworks from the beach, my toes duginto the clean white sand. Dan slipped his hand into my left hand, andJeanine took my right. When the sky darkened and the lighted bargesputtered away through the night, we three sat in the hammock. 

I looked out over the Seven Seas Lagoon and realized that this was mylast night, ever, in Walt Disney World. It was time to reboot again, start afresh. That's what the Park was for, only somehow, this visit, I'd gotten stuck. Dan had unstuck me. 

The talk turned to Dan's impending death. 

"So, tell me what you think of this, " he said, hauling away on a glowingcigarette. 

"Shoot, " I said. 

"I'm thinking -- why take lethal injection? I mean, I may be done herefor now, but why should I make an irreversible decision?"

"Why did you want to before?" I asked. 

"Oh, it was the macho thing, I guess. The finality and all. But hell, Idon't have to prove anything, right?"

"Sure, " I said, magnanimously. 

"So, " he said, thoughtfully. "The question I'm asking is, how long can Ideadhead for? There are folks who go down for a thousand years, tenthousand, right?"

"So, you're thinking, what, a million?" I joked. 

He laughed. "A _million_? You're thinking too small, son. Try this onfor size: the heat death of the universe. "

"The heat death of the universe, " I repeated. 

"Sure, " he drawled, and I sensed his grin in the dark. "Ten to thehundred years or so. The Stelliferous Period -- it's when all the blackholes have run dry and things get, you know, stupendously dull. Cold, too. So I'm thinking -- why not leave a wake-up call for some timearound then?"

"Sounds unpleasant to me, " I said. "Brrrr. "

"Not at all! I figure, self-repairing nano-based canopic jar, massenough to feed it -- say, a trillion-ton asteroid -- and a lot ofsolitude when the time comes around. I'll poke my head in every centuryor so, just to see what's what, but if nothing really stupendous cropsup, I'll take the long ride out. The final frontier. "

"That's pretty cool, " Jeanine said. 

"Thanks, " Dan said. 

"You're not kidding, are you?" I asked. 

"Nope, I sure ain't, " he said. 

#

They didn't invite me back into the ad-hoc, even after Debra left inWhuffie-penury and they started to put the Mansion back the way it was. Tim called me to say that with enough support from Imagineering, theythought they could get it up and running in a week. Suneep was ready tokill someone, I swear. _A house divided against itself can_not_ stand_, as Mr. Lincoln used to say at the Hall of Presidents. 

I packed three changes of clothes and a toothbrush in my shoulderbag andchecked out of my suite at the Polynesian at ten a. M. , then met Jeanineand Dan at the valet parking out front. Dan had a runabout he'd pickedup with my Whuffie, and I piled in with Jeanine in the middle. We playedold Beatles tunes on the stereo all the long way to Cape Canaveral. Ourshuttle lifted at noon. 

The shuttle docked four hours later, but by the time we'd been throughdecontam and orientation, it was suppertime. Dan, nearly as Whuffie-pooras Debra after his confession, nevertheless treated us to a meal in thebig bubble, squeeze-tubes of heady booze and steaky paste, and wewatched the universe get colder for a while. 

There were a couple guys jamming, tethered to a guitar and a set oftubs, and they weren't half bad. 

Jeanine was uncomfortable hanging there naked. She'd gone to space withher folks after Dan had left the mountain, but it was in a long-haulgeneration ship. She'd abandoned it after a year or two and deadheadedback to Earth in a support-pod. She'd get used to life in space after awhile. Or she wouldn't. 

"Well, " Dan said. 

"Yup, " I said, aping his laconic drawl. He smiled. 

"It's that time, " he said. 

Spheres of saline tears formed in Jeanine's eyes, and I brushed themaway, setting them adrift in the bubble. I'd developed some real tender, brother-sister type feelings for her since I'd watched her saucer-eyeher way through the Magic Kingdom. No romance -- not for me, thanks! Butcamaraderie and a sense of responsibility. 

"See you in ten to the hundred, " Dan said, and headed to the airlock. Istarted after him, but Jeanine caught my hand. 

"He hates long good-byes, " she said. 

"I know, " I said, and watched him go. 

#

The universe gets older. So do I. So does my backup, sitting inredundant distributed storage dirtside, ready for the day that space orage or stupidity kills me. It recedes with the years, and I write out mylife longhand, a letter to the me that I'll be when it's restored into aclone somewhere, somewhen. It's important that whoever I am then knowsabout this year, and it's going to take a lot of tries for me to get itright. 

In the meantime, I'm working on another symphony, one with a little bitof "Grim Grinning Ghosts, " and a nod to "It's a Small World After All, "and especially "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow. "

Jeanine says it's pretty good, but what does she know? She's barelyfifty. 

We've both got a lot of living to do before we know what's what. 

--

================= Acknowledgements: =================

I could never have written this book without the personal support of myfriends and family, especially Roz Doctorow, Gord Doctorow and NeilDoctorow, Amanda Foubister, Steve Samenski, Pat York, Grad Conn, JohnHenson, John Rose, the writers at the Cecil Street Irregulars and MarkFrauenfelder. 

I owe a great debt to the writers and editors who mentored andencouraged me: James Patrick Kelly, Judith Merril, Damon Knight, MarthaSoukup, Scott Edelman, Gardner Dozois, Renee Wilmeth, Teresa NielsenHayden, Claire Eddy, Bob Parks and Robert Killheffer. 

I am also indebted to my editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden and my agentDonald Maass, who believed in this book and helped me bring it tofruition. 

Finally, I must thank the readers, the geeks and the Imagineers whoinspired this book. 

Cory Doctorow San Francisco September 2002

--

================= About the author: =================

Cory Doctorow is Outreach Coordinator for the Electronic FrontierFoundation, www. Eff. Org, and maintains a personal site atwww. Craphound. Com. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boingat www. Boingboing. Net, with more than 250, 000 visitors a month. He wonthe John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer at the 2000 Hugo Awards. Born and raised in Toronto, he now lives in San Francisco. He enjoysusing Google to look up interesting facts about long walks on the beach. 

--

============================= Other books by Cory Doctorow:=============================

A Place So Foreign and Eight More - short story collection, forthcomingfrom Four Walls Eight Windows in fall 2003, with an introduction byBruce Sterling

Essential Blogging, O'Reilly and Associates, 2002 - with Rael Dornfest, J. Scott Johnson, Shelley Powers, Benjamin Trott and Mena G. Trott

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction, Alpha Books, 2000 - co-written with Karl Schroeder

--

========================== Machine-readable metadata:==========================

 Down and Out in theMagic Kingdom 2003-1-9 Anovel by Cory Doctorow:

Jules is a young man barely a century old. He's lived long enough to seethe cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages andcompose three symphonies. . . And to realize his boyhood dream of taking upresidence in Disney World. 

Disney World! The greatest artistic achievement of the long-agotwentieth century. Now in the care of a network of volunteer"ad-hocs" who keep the classic attractions running as they alwayshave, enhanced with only the smallest high-tech touches. 

Now, though, it seems the "ad hocs" are under attack. A new group hastaken over the Hall of the Presidents and is replacing its venerableaudioanimatronics with new, immersive direct-to-brain interfacesthat give guests the illusion of being Washington, Lincoln, and all theothers. For Jules, this is an attack on the artistic purity of DisneyWorld 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 ofever-shifting reputations, technical wizardry, and entirelyunpredictable outcomes. 

Bursting with cutting-edge speculation and human insight, Down andOut in the Magic Kingdom reads like Neal Stephenson meets Nick Hornby: acoming-of-age romantic comedy and a kick-butt cybernetictour de force. CoryDoctorow Cory Doctorow 

 

eof