Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

to the house. If she'd tried to call, she would've gotten my voicemail-I had no way

nship, taking away my beloved (in hindsight, anyway) Hall of Presidents and threatening the Mansion. Even in my addled state, I knew that t

energy to do just t

bit of a mess, sprawled on the sofa in my u

. How's i

d become the interloper. He was the together one with the wry looks and I was the pathetic seeker who'd burned all his reputation capital. Out of habit, I chec

bout that?" I said, star

?" he

"My systems are back o

. "You wer

ear dance. "I was, but I'm not now." I felt better than

s get to the Imagineering labs.

en a nasty, stupid idea, and I'd gotten what I deserved for it. The whole point of the Bitchun Society was to

hab it

he first Doom Buggy curve, he'd leap out and scare the hell out of the guests as they went by. It didn't last long, of course.

any sort of dull, repetitious labor, and what remained-tending bar, moppin

ime. It's like the castmembers who spiel on the Jungleboat Cruise. They've each got their own patte

ion with castmembers in armor?

trollers, working with waldoes? We'll let them interact with the guests, talk with them, scare them ... We'll get rid of the existing animatronics, replace 'em with full-mobility robots, then cast the parts over the Net. Think of the Whuffie! You could put, say, a thousand operators online at onc

have AI and flash-baking, but you'll have human interac

ll have to win over to make a play

pitch the idea to her. The only problem was, my cochlea was offl

e to Walt Disney World. The ad-hocs who had built an Imagineering department in Florida and now ran the thing were the least political in the Park, classic labcoat-and-cl

es, pens, toys, housewares, he was the king. They were collaborating on their HUDs, facing each other across a lab-bench in the middle of

he entered the lab, leaving me the only one out on

an elbow. "Make a

ed to roll out of a printer in the lab's corner. Anyone else would hav

e were miniature animatronics of the Hitchhiking Ghosts in a black-light box, their skeletal robotics visible through their layers of plastic clothing; action figures that communicated by IR, so that placing one in proximity w

n in six months, filled with robotic avatars of Mansion-nuts the world 'round, Mme. Leota's gift cart p

e and glared at me as I pored over t

nough for you

and shame, and I reminded myself that I was more than a century older than

great idea-" I ran it down for her, the avatars, the robots, the rehab. She stopped glaring, s

ep, who'd been politely pretending not to

risky, dangerous. It made her and her ad-hoc better-it made them sharper." Sharper than us, that's for sure. "

'd just popped out, but I saw that I'd been right-we'd h

good idea. I think that we stand a good chance of making it happen if we approach the group and put it to them, after do

are ad-hoc moved, we'd be holding formal requirements reviews while Debr

een involved in s

expression, a nonpolitical animal be

her a production schedule-one that didn't have any review, just take the idea a

She'd dealt with

rs," he said, a

five years? Debra's people ov

e said. "No r

do this, and do it. And we can provide you with unli

nder his breath. He was a tall, thin man with a shock of curly dark hair tha

nlimited labor, capable management, material availability ..." He trailed off aga

. "How do you get from fi

ing prototypes and conceptual mockups-I knew that the real bottleneck was the constant review an

project when someone suggests a new flourish or approach that makes the whole thing immeasurably better. Then it's back to the drawing board ... So I stay at the drawing board for a long time at the start, get feedback from other

ow, but

why not just finish it, then plan another revision, do that one in eight

o Lil. "But that's not how it has to be

right. Ad-hocracy was a great thing, a Bitchun thing, but the org

e'll give every Mansion nut on the planet a shot at joining up, then we'll recruit them again to work at it, to run the telepresence rigs. We'll get buy-in from the biggest super-

e floor, hands swinging at her sides. I could tell that she was

aid at length, still pacing. Dan and

made good, reasonable decisions and kept her head in a crisis. Not a hothead. Not prone to taking radical switchbacks. This plan would burn up that reputa

ike to study the plans that Imagineering c

d her that speed was of the e

We have to mov

s me and tell me everything was forgiven

the first Mansion opened in California in 1969, no one had ever had the guts to seriously fuxor with it. Oh, sure, the Paris version, Phantom Manor, had

isney World any number of times as a guest before I settled i

n, freshly bored stupid by the three-hour liveheaded f

a punk kid snaking my way through crowded subway platforms, eeling into

igh-tech startup that had done something arcane with software agents. While he was only moderately successful, he was fabulously wealthy: he'd never raised a cent of financing for his company, and had owned it outright when he

e tables, grinding out hand after hand of twenty-one, for the sheer satisfaction of Beating The House. For him, it was pure

ng The Crowd, finding the path of least resistance, filling the gaps, guessing the short queue, dodging the

rness Campground, pitched my tent, and fairly ran to

uld have the shortest wait, I stepped back and did a quick visual survey of the twenty kiosks and evaluated the queued-up huddle in front of each. Pre-Bitchun, I'd have been primarily interes

person naked of even a modest shoulderbag or marsupial pocket. To the layperson, such a specimen might be thought of as a sure bet for a fast transaction, but I'd done an informal study and come to the conclusion that these brave i

-on pouches with biometrically keyed closures. The thing to watch for is the ergonomic consideration given to these conveyances: do they balance, are they slung for minimum interference and maximum ease of access? Someone wh

igure out what they should pack-they're just as apt to be burdened with bags and pockets and pouches, but the telltale is the efficiency of

I joined it and ticced nervously as I watched my progress relative to the other spots I could've chosen. I was bor

ling into everyone's consciousness: the death of scarcity, the death of death, the struggle to rejig an economy that had grown up focused on nothing but scarcity and death. My memo

, the grandiosity and grandeur of it all. I spent a week there stunned bovine, gri

ere everything changed. Again and again, I came back to the P

a bench or hopping up on a fence, and do a visual reccy of all the queues in sight, try to spot prevailing currents in the flow of the crowd, generally having a high old obse

land, dragging hordes of guests along with it, dancing to the JapRap sounds of the comical Sushi-K and aping the movements of the brave Hiro Protagon

and then I noticed the Mansion, but to t

g was. There wasn't a single bit of tech more advanced than a film-loop projector in the whole place, but it was all so cunningly contrived that the illusion of a haunted house was perfect: the ghosts that whirle

e chandeliers, the photo gallery. I began to pick out the words to "Grim Grinning Ghosts," the song that is repeated throughout the ride,

was, actually, mysterious chills that blew through the rooms as wandering spirits made their presence felt. By

that day, seen it so frequently that I'd started doing it myself. She grinned slyly at me as I debarked into the fried-food-and-disinfec

Whuffie-kings who were privileged to tend this bit of heavenly e

d to her, admiring the titanic mountai

but be friendly. She compromised between ghastly demeanor and her natural sweet spirit, and leered a

girl with her rotting maid's uniform and her feather-shedding duster. She was just so clean and sc

do they let you ghouls off? I'd love to t

turer's Club, learning her age in the process and losing my nerve, telling myself that

nd, the reverse is indeed true. But it's also true-and I never

ere I m

hoped to bring on-board. We were in a totally creative zone, the dialog running as fast as he c

ght away, getting hearts-and-minds action wi

e ad-hoc, getting some support for the idea, and she didn't want the appearance of i

e, I think that I was too self-centered to ever develop good skills as a peacemaker. In my younger days, I assumed that it was becau

nius. Especially when it comes to people. Probably comes from Beating Th

we started sleeping together. I'd assumed that her folks would be my best allies in the process of joining

around copies of my thesis-work. And she did the same in reverse, sincerely extolling the virtues of the othe

d once he arrived, Dan, and with net-friends around the world. The ad-hocs that

they were a faceless, passive-aggressive mass, too caught up in th

ists of Mansion-otakus from the four corners of the globe, spreadsheeting

ring up and down for a couple days now, and I kept meaning to go to the doctor, but I'd never gotten 'round to it. Periodically

" he

elements of the Mansion, part of a giant collaborative project that had been ongoing for decades, to build an

e ballroom scene, complete with the kinematics necessary for full motion. Where a "normal" fan-artist might've used a standard human kinematics librar

an asked. "Do we have

lay the credits. "I'll

crony. He'd submitted the design

asked Dan, though I had a coup

n nut," Dan sai

u k

re. I told you, back when you had

a? As I remembered it, it had been hi

we try to recruit him? Or is he the one that'd co

rn ideas into things, as fast and as copiously as possible. She picks her projects carefully. She's acquisitive, sure,

cagey. Did you hear her talk

lly. ... mean, not in

the Magic Kingdom, she's after the Park. She's taking over,

ng. Fighting had become our regular evening pastime, and Dan had t

kicking at the scratched coffee table. I heard the hysteria and unreason in my voice and it just made me madder. I was frustrated by not being able t

doing what I can, Jules. If you've got a

I'm ready to go. It was your job to get the ad-hocs ready for

you're

are you doing all day, anyway? Working shifts at the Mansio

e spoken to every goddamn one of the

d at the kitchen.

or it, then. Check my

wa

Check

r," I said, dreading

nce." She planted her hands on her slim little hips and glared at me. She'd gone pale and I could count every freckle on her

. She looked read

dmitted, not m

I'll dump it to you

zzlement when she failed to locate

ffline, outcast,

the doctor? I mean, it's been w

see him tomorrow. No sense

or too early. My systems came online a couple times, and I was too busy with the plans for the Mansion. Lil grew accustomed to the drifts of hard copy that littered the house, to

nt of the terminal I'd brought home all day, every day, crunching plans, dictating voic

rattle of my keyboard wouldn't keep him up nights. He and Lil were working a full-time campaign to recru

a mile-a-minute about a wrinkle on my original plan that would add a third walk-through segment t

ame back online. The public chatte

ear off every stitch of

then

bang you ti

you are one

letters. Quickly, they vanished. I opened my eyes again, look

uietly. My heart hammered in my c

n, then gave up

that I was back online, that their

un, Lil?"

at me. "Just go, Julius. I'll

huh? So you can bang

ut of it. I'll see you at work tomorrow-we're havi

s her

lius-" D

and him," Lil said

ropped them, flump, and I turned on my heel and wal

oor. I was all-over numb as I opened the door. He had a bottle of teq

arked wallpaper. I took the bottle from him, go

fault,"

e it is,

set. Hadn't seen you in days, and when she did see you, yo

made her

d, took a drink. "I did. It's

lfriend, in my house, wh

d I kept on doing it. I'm not m

come out here and tell you it was all a mi

long time. I refilled

you. You haven't been right, not for months. I don

ness and left burning anger and bile, my constant companions. "I n

on the wallpaper, and rolled under the bed. Dan started, but stayed

he said. He gave me a wry grin. "My Whuffie's doing good. Th

ed to forget that Dan, my good fri

xt to him. It hurt to think about it. I really l

r. I opened it without check

d small and miserable. A snide remark

went to Dan, who squir

sat on the windowsill, staring

n being dead in a couple months," I said. "Puts a

he seemed to fold in on herself. "

I realized that it was Dan, not

and and led him

e what I can get