Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

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 h
adstartled 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