Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

backup-in the era of the cure for death, people live pretty rec

had serious philosophical conundra on that subject just, you know, died, a generation

l, near Veradero, Cuba. Of course, I don't remember the incident, but knowing my habits at that par

d and twisted like intestines. Through each hole and around each corner, there was a hollow, rough sphere of surpassing, alien beauty. Giant lobsters skittered over the walls and through the holes. Schools of fish as bright as jewels darted and executed breath-taking precision

I got

ly debating the best way to get me loose. Suddenly, I was thrashing and kicking, and then I disappeared into the cave, minus my vest and bottle. I'd apparently attempted to cut through my vest's straps and managed to sever the tube of my regulator. After inhaling a jolt of sea water, I'd thr

be undertaken at a special clinic. Luckily, I'd had one made just before I left for Cuba, a few weeks ea

t. It took most of a year to get over the feeling that the whole world was putting a monstrous joke over on me, that the drowned corpse I'd seen was indeed my ow

arrying a crazy lady. He found it very curious that I always rebooted myself at Disney World. When I told him that I was going to live there someday, he asked me if that would mean that I was done r

, blood-sotted mess. I'd been lax in backing up, and I lost most of a year. But they woke me gently, with a computer-generated precis of the events of the missing interval, and a counselor contacted me daily for a year until I felt at home again in my skin. Again,

led up to my third death as seen from various third-party POVs: security footage from the Adventureland cameras, synthesized memories extracted from Dan's own backup, and a computer-generated fly-thro

kissed the smooth knuckles. Dan smiled beneficently at me and I was seized with a warm, comforting feeling of being surrounded by people w

k and legs and buttocks. A scar on my knee was missing, as were the many lines that had crisscrossed my fingers. When I looked in the mirror, I saw that my nose and earlobes were smaller and perkier. The familiar crow's-feet and the frown-lines between my eyebrows were gone. I had a day's beard all over-h

leaner and flowers and rejuve were bright in my nose, effervescent as camphor. Dan and L

Adventureland. I seemed bemused and a little sad as I emerged from the door, and began to weave my way through the crowd, using a kind of sinuous, darting shuffle that I'd developed when I was doing f

's entrance, where there is a short queue of older men, then back, just as the girl with the pith helmet draws a stylish little organic pistol, like a penis with a tail that coils around her arm. Casually, grinning, she raises her arm and gestures with the pistol, exactly like Lil does with her finger when she's uploading, and the pistol lunges forward. Dan

he Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse to the group of her friends. Dan starts to move towards me. The girl raises, arms and fires her pistol. The self-guiding smart-slug, keyed to my body chemistry, flies

ng her as she merges with the crowds on the street, ducking and weaving between them, moving toward the breezeway at Sleeping Beauty

events. The anger was starting to boil within me now. My new fists

. The face was one of the Seven Sisters-Hope." The Seven Sisters were a tren

asked. "Did they have a record

for six months: only three matched the girl's apparen

y chest, like wings, like jellyfish, vertebrae spraying like shrapnel. I sa

as definitely keyed to you-that means tha

o Disney World in the last ten year

o her after Tomo

We lost her and she never reappeared." She sounded hot and ang

ty in my voice. It was the first time I'd been murde

rest of the world couldn't hope to understand. I've seen a few assassinations, and they never made sense afterwards." He s

nd checked the time. It had been four days since my murder. I had a shift coming up, working the turnstiles at the Haunted Mansion. I liked to pull a couple of thos

to my closet, s

doing?" Lil

shift. I'm r

," Lil said, tugging at my

orless laugh. "I'm not going to let th

one? But I knew it was true. There was no way that this was all plan

room door. "Wait a second,

glare. "I'll decide that,

then," he said.

iles-sympathy Whuffie-but it was falling: Dan

crambled for the passenger door

d as I nearly rolled the runabout taking

be?" I said. "I'

" he said. "Some would

feel like me and no one else is making that claim

difference between you and an

arguments, it actually helped calm me down some. Dan was that kind of friend, a person who knew you better than you knew y

destroyed and recreated is different

, pal. You're being destroyed and r

, very sma

rence does

atom-for-atom copy. You're a clone, with a copied

ne who's just been murdered, pal

re off an

g me know that if there was anything they could do for me. ... gave them all a fixed smile and tried to concentrate on the guests, how they waited, when they arrived, how they

ed streets, past the Hall of the Presidents, noting as I rounded the corner that there w

ckey in a Ben Franklin wig and bifocals, holding a trowel. "Excuse o

f life as a squat, northern Chinese, but had had his bones lengthened and his cheekbones raised so that he loo

ee an hour after you got shot. The committee loved the plans

ention this,"

no indication that they arranged for the shooter. Everyone's got an ali

ll standing by. And they just happened to file them after I got shot, whe

idence. Debra's the sort of person who keeps a lot of plans standing by, just

er that I sought out a utilidor before I collapsed against

ning wryly. "Posit," he said, "for the moment, that Debra real

he thing he would do whenever I fell into one of his rhetori

rs; two, go after the Hall of Presidents instead of Tom Sawyer Island or eve

as to rate a full investigation. Two: Tom Sawyer Island is too visible, you can't rehab it without people seei

up my answer, he helped me to my feet and walked me out to my runabout, arguing all the

two of us in the living room, staring blankly at the windows, breathing shallowly in the claustrophobic, superheated Florida air. I had my working notes on queue man

seconds off total wait-time. And the more guests who got to experience the Mansion, the more of a Whuffie-hit Debra's people would suffer if they made a move on it. So I dutifully pecked at my notes, and found three seconds

nted it after closing and invited the other L

at we were able to simulate an off-peak queue-time, and we all stood and sweated in the preshow area, waiting

lined with black, her skin powdered to a deathly pallor. She gave us a c

ive my ass an affectionate squeeze. I turned to return the favor, and saw

rry that I didn't know what to make of. He looked away immediately. I'd known that Debra would have spi

language to poses of subtle attention directed at the new spotlights. When the newly remastered soundtrack came from behind the sconce-bearing gargoyles at the corners of the octagonal room, I leaned my body slightly in the direction of the moving stereo-image

was a low buzz of marveling conversation as we made our way onto the moving sidewalk. I

accelerated this sequence and added some random swivel to the Doom Buggies, shaving 25 seconds off the total, taking the hourly throughput cap from 2365 to 2600. It was the proof-of-concept that led to all the other secon

ulges in his tight clothes, but the Doom Buggy's pebbled black plastic interior was too dim. Dan was in the Buggy behind us, with one of the Mansion's regular castmembers. I rang his cochlea and subvocalized: "Get ready to jump out

someone on the Mansion, what would be the best place to do it? The attic staircase-- the next sequence-seemed like a good bet. A cold clarity washed over me. The elf would kill me in the gloom of the staircase, dump me out over

ircase, facing up, listening to the clamour of voices from the cemetery and the squawk of the red-eyed raven. I caught sight of the quaking groundk

voice in my cochle

eapt clear of the Buggy, stopping the ride. The elf

I paged Lil and subvocalized to her, telling

me, steadfastly ignoring the elf. I checked the timer I'd been running. The demo wa

ing heavily against the fence, staring blindly at the pet cemetery.

they decanted my backup into my new body, a merciful gap in memory from my departure at the backup terminal up un

dangered the ad-hocracy and, worst of all, the Mansion. I'd acted like an idiot. I taste

Lil, come to ask me what had gone on, I turned wit

unning a language module. "Hi there. We haven't been introduced, b

t. "Julius," I said, startled at how much like a bark it sounded. Careful, I thought, no need to esca

ly clarify the vision. Beijing-well, it was exciting, but it was rushed, you know? I mean, we were really struggling. Every day, there was another pack of squatters who wanted to tear the Park down. Debra used to

any times over. Debra herself had been killed every day for a week and restored to a series of prepared clones, beta-testin

sure," I said, and nodded significantly at the Mansion. I

h the Mansion," he s

oth looked concerned-now that I thought of it, they'd both se

h me. I was an emotional wreck. Still, I took Lil's big, scarred hand in mine as soon as she was in reach, then cuddled her to me protective

g. He was just telling me war stories

shook his hand. "That was

pect garnered from people who shared very few of my opinions. I expected that. What I didn't expect was that his weighted Whuffie score, the one that lent extra credence to the rankings of people I res

I curiously backtraced it to the occasion of my murder, when Debra's people had accorded him a generous dollop of props for the

realizing that the other three were politely ignoring my blown buffer. I could have run backwards through my short-term memory to get the gist o

the appearance of childish disattention to the almighty Whuffie. Now she had to keep up the fiction of

ack in the old days, before she went to China. We're replacing the whole thing with broadband uplinks of gestalts from each of the Presidents' lives: newspaper headlines, speeches, distilled biographi

personality seemed to be rattling around a little in my mind, as though it had been improperly fitted. I

Hall as it stood had a quiet, patriotic dignity cribbed from a hundred official buil

programmer. But I could have one of the desi

g home, now, though." She began to tug me away. Dan took my other elbow. Behi

pulling an all-nighter on the new Hall.

sit by their fire, learn their secrets. "That would be great!" I sa

ght, and I'm running into town for groceries." She was lying, but she was tell

rts. I'll just grab a shower at the Contemporary in the morn

grab some dinner at Cinderella's Royal

e," I said. "This is a

aid, giving up. "Mi

If he's going to be a nut, one of us really should stay with

ous to all of this. "Then

ht to voicemail. All the while, I kept up a patter of small-talk with him and Tim.

ncoln's armchair, her head cocked lazily, her legs extended before her. The Hall's normal smells of ozone and cleanliness were overridden by sweat a

r deaths. It was patrician, waxy, long, with a nose that was made for staring down. She was at least as old as I was, though s

had been split into little clusters, hunched over terminals. They all had the raccoon-eyed, sl

. After all, she'd been killed dozens, if not hundre

y. "Tim offered to show us

. "Oh, sure. Dan an

er some intelligence for us to use. They knew what he was up to, of course, but Dan was a fairly charming guy and he worked like a mule, so they tolerated him. But it

I show them t

then said, "Sure, why no

ose, packed up, stacked. They hadn't wasted a moment-they'd spent a week tearing down a show that had run for more than a century. The

ng was off, and any number of wireless keyboards, pointers a

it: Lincoln's old speech, along with the civil-war montage. Just

ncoln: every nuance of his speech, the painstakingly researched movement tics, his warts and beard and topcoat. It almost felt like I

se-impressions, rich and detailed. I knew on the spot th

watched him as his expression shifted from skep

" I said. "Really, r

did the gestalt progra

he idea in Beijing, when I was dying a lot. There's something wonderful about having memorie

t all," he said, turning to m

trying to make it all more impressionistic, less computer-y. He's wrong, of course.

aking the experience human, a mile in the presidents' shoes. Empathy-driven