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 goi............