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 i couldtalk 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 got importantthings 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 youmeet me? i can’t really come to you. i’m at the contemporary, tower b,room 2334.”

“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 for me.

let’s not make a habit of this, all right?”

i whooshed out my relief. “i promise.”

106he 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 myfriend, 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 sevenseas lagoon, 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 rapid transit(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.

107“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’t there anotherway?”

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’t takeit, 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. yourbrain is broken, son. all that meds will do is mask the symptoms, whileyou 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 this clone immediatelyand get you restored into a new one in 48 hours.”

“isn’t there another way? please? you have to help me—i can’t lose allthis.” i couldn’t admit my real reasons for being so attached to this singularlymiserable 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, otherthan 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 file thatyou’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. everypassing day made it harder to take the cure. to lie down and wake upfriends with dan, to wake up and be in love with lil again. to wake upto a mansion the way i remembered it, a hall of presidents where i couldfind lil bent over with her head in a president’s guts of an afternoon. tolie down and wake without disgrace, without knowing that my loverand my best friend would betray me, had betrayed me.

i just couldn’t do it—not yet, anyway.

108dan—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’re complications.

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, long internships,anatomy drills… truth is, the average doc today gets more training inbedside manner than bioscience. ‘doctor’ pete is a technician, not an md,not the way you and i mean it. anyone with the kind of knowledgeyou’re looking for is working as a historical researcher, 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 myselfon the white sand beach at the contemporary, jogging the walkaround the world, taking a canoe out to the wild and overgrown discoveryisland, and generally cooling out. dan came by in the eveningsand it was like old times, running down the pros and cons of whuffieand bitchunry and life in general, sitting on my porch with a sweatingpitcher of lemonade.

on the last night, he presented me with a clever little handheld, a museumpiece 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, likethe turnip watches the ben franklin streetmosphere players wore at theamerican adventure.

museum piece or no, it meant that i was once again qualified to participatein the bitchun society, albeit more slowly and less efficiently thani once may’ve. i took it downstairs the next morning and drove to themagic 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 handheld109revealed the worst: my whuffie was low enough that someone had justgotten inside and driven away, realizing that they could make more popularuse 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 seethe front desk.” my room had been reassigned, too. i had the short endof 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, andno one offered me an inch more personal space than was necessary. i hadhit bottom.

i took the castmember entrance to the magic kingdom, clipping myname tag to my disney operations polo shirt, ignoring the glares of myfellow castmembers in the utilidors.

i used the handheld to page dan. “hey there,” he said, brightly. icould tell 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 nevercome down, as were tim and her whole crew in aggregate. they weredrawing from guests by the millions, and from castmembers and frompeople who’d read the popular accounts of their struggle against theforces of petty jealousy 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, and pattedthe bench next to him. i sat with him and sipped, waiting for him tospill whatever bit of rotten news he had for me this morning—i couldfeel it hovering like storm clouds.

he wouldn’t talk though, not until we finished the coffee. then hestood and strolled over to the mansion. it wasn’t rope-drop yet, andthere weren’t any guests in the park, which was all for the better, givenwhat was coming next.

110“have you taken a look at debra’s whuffie lately?” he asked, finally,as we 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 number onewith a bullet. ever since word got out about what happened to the hall,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 is it they’ve done, dan?” i asked, already knowing the answer.

dan didn’t have to respond, because at that moment, tim emergedfrom the mansion, wearing a light cotton work-smock. he had athoughtful expression, and when he saw us, he beamed his elfin grin andcame 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 can flashbake.

we’ve got some high-whuffie horror writers pulling together aseries of narratives about the lives of each ghost: how they met their tragicends, 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 andthen getting into the ride-vehicles, the doom buggies. but here’s the bigchange: we slow it all down. we trade off throughput for intensity, makeit 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 guests silly.

111when a ghost catches you, lays its hands on you—wham! flash-bake!

you get its whole grisly story in three seconds, across your frontal lobe.

by the time you’ve left, you’ve had ten or more ghost-contacts, and thenext time you come back, it’s all new ghosts with all new stories. theway that the hall’s drawing ’em, we’re bound to be a hit.” he put hishands behind his back and rocked on his heels, clearly proud 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 their driveto establish thematic continuity, they’d turned the formula into a cookiecutter,stamping out half a dozen clones for each of the “themed” areasin the future showcase. it went like this: first, we were cavemen, thenthere was ancient greece, then rome burned (cue sulfur-odor fx), thenthere was the great depression, and, finally, we reached the modern age.

who knows what the future holds? we do! we’ll all have videophonesand be living on the ocean floor. once was cute—compelling and inspirational,even—but six times was embarrassing. like everyone, once imagineeringgot themselves a good hammer, everything started to resemblea nail. even now, the epcot ad-hocs were repeating the sins of their forebears,closing every ride with a scene of bitchun utopia.

and debra was repeating the classic mistake, tearing her way throughthe magic 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 to help.”

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 comeup with some great ideas.” i read between the lines: the newbies you invitedin 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.

112dan 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 probationary membersright 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 haddark circles under his eyes and his hands shook with exhaustion. heseemed to be 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, believeme, 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 dothe rehab 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’t justleave the mansion half-done—they’ll murder me.”

the kernel of a plan formed in my mind. “suneep, we don’t like thenew rehab plan, and we’re going to stop it. you can help. just stonewallthem—tell them they’ll have to find other imagineering support if theywant 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 ’em thatthey’re welcome to make any changes they want to the plan, if they canfind someone else to execute them.”

suneep looked unhappy. “fine—so then they go and find someoneelse to do it, and that person gets all the credit for the work my team’sdone so far. i just flush my time down the toilet.”

113“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 isyour 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 bunchwere tough to rouse to action. dan had turned down the air conditioningan hour before the meeting and closed up all the windows, so that theroom was 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 my behalf,and i was content to let him do his thing.

when lil had arrived, she’d sized up the situation with a sour expression:

sit in the front, near dan, or in the back, near me. she’d chosen themiddle, and to concentrate on dan i had to tear my eyes away from thesweat glistening on her long, pale neck.

dan stalked the aisles like a preacher, eyes blazing. “they’re stealingyour future! they’re stealing your past! they claim they’ve got yoursupport!”

he lowered his tone. “i don’t think that’s true.” he grabbed a castmemberby her hand and looked into her eyes. “is it true?” he said solow 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 the whispers.

a nervous chuckle rippled through the crowd.

114“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 adhocthey’re displacing doesn’t have a hope of fighting back.

for the defenders, it’s a simple decision: step down gracefully and salvagesome reputation out of the thing—fighting back will surely burnaway 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 theearly days 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 the revolution,and they knew what they wanted: control of the department, ousteringof 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 micat my 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 there wasa blur as half a dozen grad students rushed the stage. they were dressedin university poverty-chic, wrinkled slacks and tattered sports coats, andfive of them formed a human wall in front of the prof while the sixth, the115heavyset one with the dark hair and the prominent mole on her cheek,unclipped his mic and clipped it to her lapel.

“wakey wakey!” she called, and the reality of the moment hit homefor me: this wasn’t on the lesson-plan.

“come on, heads up! this is not a drill. the university of toronto departmentof sociology is under new management. if you’ll set yourhandhelds to ‘receive,’ we’ll be beaming out new lesson-plans momentarily.

if you’ve forgotten your handhelds, you can download the planslater 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’sworth 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. effectiveimmediately, the university of toronto ad-hoc sociology departmentis in charge. we promise high-relevance curriculum with anemphasis on reputation economies, post-scarcity social dynamics, andthe social 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 drilling herlecture for a while. periodically, the human wall behind her shudderedas 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 social deviance,and we got the same drill there, the same stirring propaganda, thesame comical sight of a tenured prof battering himself against a humanwall of ad-hocs.

reporters pounced on us when we left the class, jabbing at us withmics and peppering us with questions. i gave them a big thumbs-up andsaid, “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, that theywere a gang of thugs who were totally unqualified to teach. a116counterpoint 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 also writtenmost 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 homemade uniforms.

university security got the message—anyone could be replaced—and stayed away.

the profs picketed. they held classes out front attended by gradeconsciousbrown-nosers who worried that the ad-hocs’ classes wouldn’tcount towards their degrees. fools like me alternated between the outdoorand 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. the adhocsspent 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-ed offeringfrom concordia in montreal. forty years later, the fight was settledforever. once you took backup-and-restore, the rest of the bitchunry justfollowed, 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,passing out the materials that debra’s people had stashed there, along aline that 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 little friends,their eyes glinting in the dim light. the gaggle of transhuman kids mademy guts clench, made me think of zed and of lil and of my unmediatedbrain, and i had a sudden urge to shred them verbally.

117no.

no. that way lay madness and war. this was about taking back whatwas ours, not punishing the interlopers. “kim, i think you should leave,”

i said, quietly.

she snorted and gave me a dire look. “who died and made you boss?”

she said. her friends thought it very brave, they made it clear withdouble-jointed hip-thrusts and glares.

“kim, you can leave now or you can leave later. the longer you wait,the worse it will be for you and your whuffie. you blew it, and you’renot a part of the mansion anymore. go home, go to debra. don’t stayhere, and don’t come back. ever.”

ever. be cast out of this thing that you love, that you obsess over, thatyou 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 would getthem 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 square adhocspassed their loads around in clear embarrassment, knowing thatthey were violating every principle they cared about.

as i watched, gaps appeared in the bucket-brigade as castmembersslipped away, faces burning scarlet with shame. at the hall of presidents,debra presided over an orderly relocation of her things, a cheerfulcadre of her castmembers quickly moving it all offstage. i didn’t have tolook at my handheld to know what was happening to our whuffie.

by evening, we were back on schedule. suneep supervised the placementof his telepresence rigs and lil went over every system in minutedetail, bossing a crew of ad-hocs that trailed behind her, double- andtriple-checking it all.

suneep smiled at me when he caught sight of me, hand-scattering dustin the parlor.

“congratulations, sir,” he said, and shook my hand. “it was masterfullydone.”

118“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, iwondered. happy enough to get back together? my mood fell, eventhough a part of me said that dan would never go back to her, not afterall we’d been through 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 puttingon. i would almost certainly be persona non grata. “i don’t think so,” isaid, carefully. “i’ll probably work late here.”

he chided me for working too hard, but once he saw that i had no intentionof 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.

i got 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 their canopicjars in kissimmee.