Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

of Presidents convin

had had me killed, a

hen the time came for them to ma

on was a preemptive strike against them

king with effortless cooperation born of the adversity they'd faced in Beijing. Debra moved from team to team,

d-hoc this tight could pull off anything if it advanced the

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

rained pride as I switched on public access. He dumped the

pass through, there had been a sense of order, of narrative, but this, this was gestalt, the whole thing in one undifferentiated ball, filling me and spilling over. It was panicky for a moment, as

we could do for the Mansion with this! What elegance! Directly imprinting th

liked it?" Tim said. I nodded, and staggered back to the theatre seat w

compromises of technology and expense that had given us the Disney rides-rides that had entertained

hy did they have to destroy everything I loved to realize this? They could build this tech

d make over Disney World and hold it, a single ad-hoc where three hundred h

a damp chill that crawled up my back and made my breath stick in my throat. I turned to contemplate the Hall of Presidents, staid a

n the theater, and woke him. He gr

new they had, and I was glad. It

they offered their backups, remem

It's all too neat and tidy. How else could they have gotten so far with the Hall so fast? They knew it was coming, they planned

breathed around me, the sounds of maintenance crews scurrying in the night. "I do be

ansion," I said. "

it," Da

here was a part of

e key influencers in the Park in long before the bugs were hammered out. A smooth run would garner the kind of impressed reaction that guaranteed continued support while they finished up; a failed

ted the runabout from home to the castmember parking. I snuck

ntinued. "It's better that she do

"Don't I need pla

t wasn't fair, but I didn't care. I knew that we were fighting for our own survival. "It's good versus evil, Dan. You don't want to be a post-person. You want to stay human. The rides are human. We each mediate them through our own experience. We're physically ins

es and immaculate purple signage. Dan was looking thoughtful, the way he had back in our old day

nd that's not a certainty, we both know that. Even if that's the case, we've got better means at our disposal. Improving the Mansion, competing with her head to head, that's smart. Give it a little while and we can come back at her

d none of them are emotionally satisf

stalked out before it had a chance to extrude its recharger cock. I

arriving at high noon, I was sticking to my traditional pattern for watching hot-weather crowd dynamics. I'd made a point of visiting twice during the previous week at t

pneumatic waste-disposal system, decommissioned in the 20s. The kids who grew up in the Park had been notorious explorers of the tubes, which still whiffed faintly of the garbage bags they'd once whi

n't killed me and forced me to switch to a new body, I probably wou

for a reply, and started inching

didn't occur to me until I was forty minutes into the pneumatic

ng to reach i

Frequency generator with a directional, focused beam that would punch up through the floor of the Hall of Presidents and fuse every goddamn scrap of unshielded electronics on

oice oddly muffled

he sound of his painful, elbow-dragging progress throug

each my ba

hit,"

he fucking editorial to yours

his hand groping up my calf. Soon, his chest was crushing my ca

appy about my snapping at him, but I was too wrapped up to consider an apo

inder as long as my palm-out of

ass it up?

stuck fast when his ribcage met my glut

my breath. Would he do it? It was one thing to be my

les," h

ear from you." I was boiling with anger-at mysel

," he

max dispersion and

then it was done. The gun was a one-shot, something I'd confiscated f

idence behind. I resumed my bellycrawl forward to the next service hatch, near

anged around the mezzanine inside the Hall of Presidents, a collection of inf

my hand, and I smiled back, full of good feelings now that I knew that he was going down in flames. I found Lil and sli

ln's coat and stovepipe, delivered a short speech. There was some kind of broadcast rig mount

the stage to a polite round of a

directory, no rush of sensation, nothing. I turned to Lil to make some snotty remark, but her eyes were closed, her mouth lolling open, her breat

nostics. No HUD.

th

s of

Lil's hand and walked to the Liberty Belle load-zone, our spot f

emused, offline haze, I could t

after a hard moment's staring into t

?" I said

re better than good. They'r

hey've got soul, I don't think they've got history, I don't think they've got any kind of connection to the past. The world grew up in the Di

-you've spent more time in the Mansion than anyone, you know how much refinement, how much work there is in there. How can

her freckles livid over the flush of her cheeks. "Sorry-it's just shocking. Maybe you're right. And even if you're

k when I cry," she said. "L

eased with myself for having improved

f well-wishers were celebrating by passing a rock around. Debra had lost the tailcoat and hat, and was in

through some insincere compliments, nodded, and to

a team effort." She hugged her cronies to

at's your tim

h painted over a copper mesh-a Faraday cage. That's why the HERF gun hadn't done anything; that's why they'd been so casual about working with the shielding off their computers. With my eye, I followed the copper shielding around the entire stage and up the walls,

the stones to stage an assassination. Once I'd made that leap, I realized that it was only a matte

kup terminal in the gateway between Liberty Square and Fantasyland. "When was the last ti

ariness at me, looking more like an overm

night and at lunchtime-with things the way they are, we ca

, but this was too crucial to set aside for petulance. "You can back up that

and it'd make me feel a lot better.

sleep. I want to do some work on new merch f

y so much to ask? Fine. Wait wh

ed and gl

othing happened. Oh, yeah, right, I was offlin

he'd had. I glared at her as she subvocalized and air-typed in the corner, shut away from me. I hadn't told her th

and often as not the system righted itself after a good night's sleep

into the kitchen to consult our old starburst clock to get the time. It was 3

feebly when I tried to rouse her, so I covered

s I sat up. I preferred to let my subconscious do its own thing, so I'd long ago programmed my systems to keep me asleep during REM

? I'm one big ache from sleeping on t

instruct her nervous system to manufacture endorphin

pped coffee in the general direction o

hift for me-the merch ideas are really coming together and I

eese and noticed a crumby plate in the sink

boil in earnest. I slammed Dan's plate into

ur shift-fucking work

as hormonally enhanced, anyway. "What's wrong, honey?" she said, going int

oticed, Debra's about to eat you and your little band of plucky adventurers and pick her teeth with the bones

feeling in my gut. It was the wors

ew, a kind of castmember mixer. She'd been just 19-apparent and real-and had a bubbl

ey World, wresting control from a gang of wealthy former shareholders who'd been operating it as their private preserve. Rita was appa

t Whuffie loser could eat, sleep, travel and access the net without hassle, their wealth was more

l centers, the rides, first by the hundred, then, as the hot July day ticked by, by the thousand. The shareholders' lackeys-who worked the Park for the chance to be a part of the magic, even if they ha

to fight back without doing it in front of the guests. We'd prearranged with a couple of airline ad-hocs to add extra routes to Orlando and the guests came pouring in." She smiled, remembering the m

ying to shove me out. I slept in a sleeping bag on the floor of the utilidor, with a couple dozen others, in three hour shifts. That was when I met this asshole"-she chucked her husb

ng noises. "Jesus, Rita, no one ne

about your parents' courtship, you can either sit somewhere else or gri

ion. It's our fault-we thought that Disney World would be the best place to raise a child in the Bitchun Society. Maybe it was, but …" She trailed off and rubbed her palms on her t

the dinosaurs!'" Tom wore himself older, apparent 50, with graying sidewalls and crinkled smile-lines, the better to present a non-threatening air of authority to the gu

milksops we are, Julius? When you get tired of that, why don't you come over he

use?" Lil's

aspiring to a place among the ruling cliques. "They're passionate about maintaining the Park, that's for sure. I made the mistake of lifting a queue-gate at the Jungleboat Cruise last week and I got a very earnest lecture about the

ook that I didn't know what to make of. I

the revolution, can you? Didn't we all strug

re talking about the very same thing. We were talking-" he drew a breath and looked askance at his wife, w

wouldn't be around when the time came to vote me in? I banished the thought as quickly as it came-I was

, he was my link to my family, to my first adulthood and my only childhood. Dan had taken me to Gananoque and we'd spent the day bounding around the countryside on seven-league boots, sailing high over the lakes of the Thousand Islands and the crazy fiery carpet of autumn leaves. We topped off the day at a dairy commune he knew where they still made cheese from cow'

alked to Li

ally. We don't want to worry her. She's not g

that they had told me too much, more than they'd intended. I drifted off a

pic jars in Kissimee with instructions not to be woken until their newsbots grabbed suff

ead. For her, it was a slap in the face, a reproach to h

get fucking angry about anything?

reat-granddaughter; Lil, my lover and best friend and sponsor to the Liberty Square ad-hocracy; Lil turned white as a

t the ceiling fan as it made it