the meds helped me cope with the next couple of days, starting the rehabon the mansion. we worked all night erecting a scaffolding aroundthe facade, 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, handlingmy calls, looking up plans, monitoring the net for the first grumblings asthe disney-going public realized that the mansion was being takendown for a full-blown rehab. we didn’t exchange any unnecessarywords, standing side by side without ever looking into one another’seyes. i couldn’t really feel awkward around dan, anyway. he never letme, and besides we had our hands full directing disappointed guestsaway from the mansion. a depressing number of them headed straightfor the hall of presidents.

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 onthe way to the new h of p’s and it looks like some big stuff’safoot—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 ofp’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, undead pantomime.

in time, suneep and his gang would have a batch of telepresencerobots up and running, and we’d move to them, get them wandering thequeue area, interacting with curious guests. the new mansion would be90open for business in 48 hours, albeit in stripped-down fashion. the scaffoldingmade for a nice weenie, a visual draw that would pull the hordesthat thronged debra’s hall of presidents over for a 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 tomy handicap, 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 mansionfans we hoped to recruit. of course, nothing happened. i’d done that adozen times that morning, and there was no end in sight. i couldn’t seemto get lathered up about it, though, nor about anything else, not even thehickey just visible under dan’s collar. the transdermal mood-balanceron my 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 missus.”

she didn’t. she arrived out of breath and excited, jogging. she was apparent20, and dressed like a real 20 year old, in a hipster climate-controlcowl that clung to and released her limbs, which were long and doublekneed.

all the rage among the younger set, including the girl who’d shotme.

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 butwithout jostling anyone. “kim,” i called as she drew near. “over here.”

91she gave a happy shriek and made a beeline for us. even charging fullbore,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 the peculiarviolence of the extra-jointed. “julius,” i said, then waited while sherepeated 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 you first,” isaid.

“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. itwas 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 aworld-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 thatthe new castmembers we brought in would want to record every littledetail and push it out over the net as a big old whuffie collector.

“i can switch it off,” kim said. she looked worried, and i really startedto grasp how important the mansion was to the people we were recruiting,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-nakedby the 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.

92we went back to trawling the net for the next candidate.

by lunchtime, there were ten drilling, hammering, troweling new castmembersaround 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,and the transdermal under my costume itched. despite the happy-juicein my bloodstream, a streak of uncastmemberly crankiness was shotthrough my mood. i needed to get offstage.

dan helped me hobble away, and as we hit the utilidor, he whisperedin my 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 of mobiletelepresence robots for the exterior, and had promised a prototypefor that afternoon. the robots were easy enough—just off-the-shelf stuff,really—but the costumes and kinematics routines were something else.

thinking about what he and suneep’s gang of hypercreative super-geniuseswould come up with cheered me up a little, as did being out of thepublic 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 were displaying.

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, threwthem wide enough to embrace the whole mad, gibbering chaos. “whatwonderful flumgubbery!” 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, akinematics routine for a class of flying spooks that use gasbags to stayaloft—silent and scary. it’s old spy-tech, and the retrofit’s coming 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.” he93unrolled an lcd and handed it to me. a flock of spooks danced on thescreen, rendered against the ballroom scene. they were thematically consistentwith the existing mansion ghosts, more funny than scary, andtheir faces were familiar. i looked around the lab and realized that they’dcaricatured various imagineers.

“ah! you noticed,” suneep said, rubbing his hands together. “a verygood joke, 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 liketo stop 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 fordan’s hand, saw me, and changed her mind.

“hi, guys,” she said, with studied casualness.

“oh, hello!” said suneep. he fired his finger at her—the flying ghosts,i imagined. lil’s eyes rolled up for a moment, then she nodded exhaustedlyat 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 be acouple 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 myshoulders and squeezed. he smelled of an exotic cocktail of industriallubricant, ozone, and fatigue poisons.

94“you two should go home and give each other a massage,” he said.

“you’ve earned some rest.”

dan met my eye and shook his head apologetically. i squirmed outfrom under 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 tooka surface 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 forreal weather, the kind of climate i’d grown up with in toronto. it wasoctober, for chrissakes, and a lifetime of conditioning told me that it wasmay. i stopped and leaned on a bench for a moment and closed my eyes.

unbidden, and with the clarity of a hud, i saw high park in toronto,clothed in its autumn colors, fiery reds and oranges, shades of evergreenand 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. asmall audience participated, urged on by the recruits on the scaffolding.

“well, at least that’s going right,” i muttered to myself. and it was, exceptthat i could see members of the ad-hoc looking on from the sidelines,and the looks weren’t kindly. totally obsessive fans are a goodmeasure of a ride’s popularity, but they’re kind of a pain in the ass, too.

they lipsynch the soundtrack, cadge souvenirs and pester you withsmarmy, show-off questions. after a while, even the cheeriest castmemberstarts to lose patience, develop an automatic distaste for them.

the liberty square ad-hocs who were working on the mansion hadbeen railroaded into approving a rehab, press-ganged into working on it,and were now forced to endure the company of these grandstandingmegafans. if i’d been there when it all started—instead of sleeping!—i95may’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-response enthusiastically,walking around to the ad-hocs and getting them to join in, reluctantlyor otherwise.

by the time the choir retired, sweaty and exhausted, a group of adhocswere 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 methat it would be another week before i could have even five productionunits. 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.

i was staying on top of the fan response to the rehab from a terminali’d had installed in my hotel room. kim and her local colleagues werefielding millions of hits every day, their whuffie accumulating as enviousfans 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 missiveabout the magic of working in the mansion. “hey, there,” i said. “haveyou got a 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 thepark and talk?”

kim wore her costume every chance she got. i’d been quite firm abouther turning it in to the laundry every night instead of wearing it home.

96reluctantly, she stepped into a change-room and switched into hercowl. we took the utilidor to the fantasyland exit and walked throughthe late-afternoon rush of children and their adults, queued deep andthick for 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 telepresence rigs,too.”

“well, i’m really pleased with what you and your friends are up tohere. you’re working hard, putting on a good show. i like the songsyou’ve been 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 infront of me, hand on my shoulder, looking into my eyes. she lookedserious.

“is there a problem, julius? if there is, i’d rather we just talked about it,instead of making chitchat.”

i smiled and took her hand off my shoulder. “how old are you, kim?”

“nineteen,” she said. “what’s the problem?”

nineteen! jesus, no wonder she was so volatile. what’s my excuse,then?

“it’s not a problem, kim, it’s just something i wanted to discuss withyou. the people you-all have been bringing down to work for me,they’re all really great castmembers.”

“but?”

“but we have limited resources around here. not enough hours in theday for 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 numberof extras 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 hereand discovering that there aren’t any shifts for them to take.”

she gave me a relieved look. “is that all? don’t worry about it. i’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 couldeven rotate back and forth!” she was clearly proud of her foresight.

97my 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, the park,the whole of walt disney world.

“oh, i don’t think it’ll come to that,” i said, carefully. “i’m sure we canfind 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’ll neverlet us bring more in. they also won’t stop working on the rehab to trainthem, costume them, feed them and mother them. they’re losing whuffieevery day that the mansion’s shut up, and they don’t want any moredelays. dave’s already joined up with debra, and i’m sure he’s not thelast 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 of thehouse where i’d lived. i’d driven out that night to convince lil to sell thead-hocs on bringing in more recruits, but it wasn’t going according toplan. 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 with thedj’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 a98screeching u-turn and drove the little runabout to her place, a tiny condoin a crumbling complex that had once been a gated seniors’ village, pre-bitchun.

her place was easy to spot. all the lights were burning, faint conversationaudible through the screen door. i jogged up the steps two at a time,and was about to knock when a familiar voice drifted through thescreen.

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 bestwork 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. theanger and fear suffused me from tip to toe, and i felt suddenly light andcool and ready to do something terrible.

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

some people never learn. i’m one of them, apparently.

i almost chortled over the foolproof simplicity of my plan as i slippedin through the cast entrance using the id card i’d scored when my systemswent offline and i was no longer able to squirt my authorization atthe door.

i changed clothes in a bathroom on main street, switching into a blackcowl that completely obscured my features, then slunk through the shadowsalong the storefronts until i came to the moat around cinderella’scastle. keeping low, i stepped over the fence and duck-walked down theembankment, then slipped into the water and sloshed across to the adventurelandside.

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 inside thetheater itself.

humming the small world theme, i produced a short wrecking barfrom my cowl’s tabbed pocket and set to work.

the primary broadcast units were hidden behind a painted scrim overthe stage, and they were surprisingly well built for a first generationtech. i really worked up a sweat smashing them, but i kept at it until nota single component remained recognizable. the work was slow and loud99in the silent park, but it lulled me into a sleepy reverie, an autohypnoticswing-bang-swing-bang timeless time. to be on the safe side, i grabbedthe 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 them reconstructthe 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, andsloshed my way into my runabout, shoes leaking water from the moat.

for the first time in weeks, i slept like a baby.

of course, i got caught. i don’t really have the temperament for machiavellianshenanigans, and i left a trail a mile wide, from the muddyfootprints in the contemporary’s lobby to the wrecking bar thoughtlesslyleft behind, with my cowl and the storage units from the hall, forgottenon the back seat of my runabout.

i whistled my personal jazzy uptempo version of “grim grinningghosts” as i made my way from costuming, through the utilidor, out toliberty square, half an hour before the park opened.

standing in front of me were lil and debra. debra was holding mycowl and wrecking bar. lil held the storage units.

i hadn’t put on my transdermals that morning, and so the emotion ifelt was 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.

100i 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 boththere, a step behind me, puffing and red. debra held my wrecking barlike a weapon, and she brandished it at me.

“you’re a goddamn idiot, you know that?” she said. i think if we’dbeen alone, she would’ve swung it at me.

“can’t take it when someone else plays rough, huh, debra?” i sneered.

lil shook her head disgustedly. “she’s right, you are an idiot. the adhoc’smeeting 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 for us.”

“for god’s sake, lil, can’t you see what’s going on? they killed me!

they did it, and now we’re fighting each other instead of her! why can’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 is triteand unimaginative. you’re a fucking despoiler and you don’t even havethe 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 meetingroom. lil turned. “i don’t think you should be here, debra,” she said inmeasured tones.

debra shook her head. “you can’t keep me out, you know. and youshouldn’t want to. we’re on the same side.”

101i 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 entire adhoc,except for my new recruits. no work was being done on the rehab,then, and the liberty belle would be sitting at her dock. even the restaurantcrews were there. liberty square must’ve been a ghost town. it gavethe meeting a sense of urgency: the knowledge that there were guests inliberty square wandering aimlessly, looking for castmembers to helpthem out. of course, debra’s crew might’ve been around.

the crowd’s faces were hard and bitter, leaving no doubt in my mindthat i 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, a memberof this ad-hoc vandalized the hall of presidents, rendering it useless.

it’s estimated that it will take at least a week to get it back up andrunning.

“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 my serviceson the repairs.”

there were nods in the audience. lil wouldn’t be the only one workingat the hall that week. “disney world isn’t a competition,” lil said.

“all the different ad-hocs work together, and we do it to make the parkas good as we can. we lose sight of that at our peril.”

i nearly gagged on bile. “i’d like to say something,” i said, as calmly asi 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. “idid it, and i don’t have any excuse for having done it. it may not have102been the smartest thing i’ve ever done, but i think you all should understandhow i was driven to it.

“we’re not supposed to be in competition with one another here, butwe all know that that’s just a polite fiction. the truth is that there’s realcompetition in the park, and that the hardest players are the crew that rehabbedthe hall of presidents. they stole the hall from you! they did itwhile you were distracted, they used me to engineer the distraction, theymurdered me!” i heard the shriek creeping into my voice, but i couldn’tdo anything about it.

“usually, the lie that we’re all on the same side is fine. it lets us worktogether in peace. but that changed the day they had me shot. if youkeep on believing it, you’re going to lose the mansion, the liberty belle,tom sawyer island—all of it. all the history we have with this place—allthe history that the billions who’ve visited it have—it’s going to be destroyedand replaced with the sterile, thoughtless shit that’s taken overthe hall. once that happens, there’s nothing left that makes this placespecial. anyone can get the same experience sitting at home on the sofa!

what happens then, huh? how much longer do you think this place willstay 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 spoke up.

“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 heneeds help. i urge you to see to it that he gets it.

“next, i’d like to say that as far as i’m concerned, we are on the sameside—the side of the park. this is a special place, and it couldn’t existwithout all of our contributions. what happened to julius was terrible,and i sincerely hope that the person responsible is caught and brought tojustice. but that person wasn’t me or any of the people in my ad-hoc.

“lil, i’d like to thank you for your generous offer of assistance, andwe’ll take you up on it. that goes for all of you—come on by the hall,we’ll put you to work. we’ll be up and running in no time.

“now, as far as the mansion goes, let me say this once and for all:

neither me nor my ad-hoc have any desire to take over the operations ofthe mansion. it is a terrific attraction, and it’s getting better with thework you’re all doing. if you’ve been worrying about it, then you canstop worrying now. we’re all on the same side.

103“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 to keep thedetails of last night’s incident to ourselves. letting the guests and theworld know about this ugly business isn’t good for anyone. can we allagree to do that?”

there was a moment’s pause while the results were tabulated on thehuds, then lil gave them a million-dollar smile. “i knew you’d comethrough. thanks, guys. let’s get to work.”

i spent the day at the hotel, listlessly scrolling around on my terminal.

lil had made it very clear to me after the meeting that i wasn’t to showmy face inside the park until i’d “gotten help,” whatever that meant.

by noon, the news was out. it was hard to pin down the exact source,but it seemed to revolve around the new recruits. one of them had toldtheir net-pals about the high drama in liberty square, and mentionedmy 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 businessand leaving walt disney world to start yet another new life, whuffiepoorand fancy-free.

it wouldn’t be so bad. i’d been in poor repute before, not so long ago.

that first time dan and i had palled around, back at the u of t, i’d beenthe center of a lot of pretty ambivalent sentiment, and whuffie-poor as aman can be.

i slept in a little coffin on-campus, perfectly climate controlled. it wascramped 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 in arestaurant, i was free to queue up at any of the makers around town andget 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.

104of 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 concertsat the skydome, and shoot down any snotty reputation-punk whosneered at my whuffie tally. being with dan was a process of constantlyreevaluating my beliefs in the bitchun society, and i’d never had a morevibrant, 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 thewhole mess.

i didn’t.

i called up the doc.