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.
"S
ays 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