Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

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 torealiz
e 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