Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

hardly needed me to pollute her with remembrances of my crazy exes.

***

If I was nuts, it wasn't the kind of spectacular nuts that Zed had gone. It was a slow, seething, ugly nuts that had me alienating my friends, sabotaging my enemies, driving my girlfriend into my best friend's arms.

I decided that I would see a doctor, just as soon as we'd run the rehab past the ad-hoc's general meeting. I had to get my priorities straight.

I pulled on last night's clothes and walked out to the Monorail station in the main lobby. The platform was jammed with happy guests, bright and cheerful and ready for a day of steady, hypermediated fun. I tried to make myself attend to them as individuals, but try as I might, they kept turning into a crowd, and I had to plant my feet firmly on the platform to keep from weaving among them to the edge, the better to snag a seat.

The meeting was being held over the Sunshine Tree Terrace in Adventureland, just steps from where I'd been turned into a road-pizza by the still-unidentified assassin. The Adventureland ad-hocs owed the Liberty Square crew a favor since my death had gone down on their turf, so they had given us use of their prize meeting room, where the Florida sun streamed through the slats of the shutters, casting a hash of dust-filled shafts of light across the room. The faint sounds of the tiki-drums and the spieling Jungle Cruise guides leaked through the room, a low- key ambient buzz from two of the Park's oldest rides.

There were almost a hundred ad-hocs in the Liberty Square crew, almost all second-gen castmembers with big, friendly smiles. They filled the room to capacity, and there was much hugging and handshaking before the meeting came to order. I was thankful that the room was too small for the de rigeur ad- hoc circle-of-chairs, so that Lil was able to stand at a podium and command a smidge of respect.

'Hi there!' she said, brightly. The weepy puffiness was still present around her eyes, if you knew how to look for it, but she was expert at putting on a brave face no matter what the ache.

The ad-hocs roared back a collective, 'Hi, Lil!' and laughed at their own corny tradition. Oh, they sure were a barrel of laughs at the Magic Kingdom.

'Everybody knows why we're here, right?' Lil said, with a self-deprecating smile. She'd been lobbying hard for weeks, after all. 'Does anyone have any questions about the plans? We'd like to start executing right away.'

A guy with deliberately boyish, wholesome features put his arm in the air. Lil acknowledged him with a nod. 'When you say 'right away,' do you mean-'

I cut in. 'Tonight. After this meeting. We're on an eight-week production schedule, and the sooner we start, the sooner it'll be finished.'

The crowd murmured, unsettled. Lil shot me a withering look. I shrugged. Politics was not my game.

Lil said, 'Don, we're trying something new here, a really streamlined process. The good part is, the process is short. In a couple months, we'll know if it's working for us. If it's not, hey, we can turn it around in a couple months, too. That's why we're not spending as much time planning as we usually do. It won't take five years for the idea to prove out, so the risks are lower.'

Another castmember, a woman, apparent 40 with a round, motherly demeanor said, 'I'm all for moving fast-Lord knows, our pacing hasn't always been that hot. But I'm concerned about all these new people you propose to recruit-won't having more people slow us down when it comes to making new decisions?'

No, I thought sourly, because the people I'm bringing in aren't addicted to meetings.

Lil nodded. 'That's a good point, Lisa. The offer we're making to the telepresence players is probationary- they don't get to vote until after we've agreed that the rehab is a success.'

Another castmember stood. I recognized him: Dave, a heavyset, self-important jerk who loved to work the front door, even though he blew his spiel about half the time. 'Lillian,' he said, smiling sadly at her, 'I think you're really making a big mistake here. We love the Mansion, all of us, and so do the guests. It's a piece of history, and we're its custodians, not its masters. Changing it like this, well …' he shook his head. 'It's not good stewardship. If the guests wanted to walk through a funhouse with guys jumping out of the shadows saying 'booga-booga,' they'd go to one of the Halloween Houses in their hometowns. The Mansion's better than that. I can't be a part of this plan.'

I wanted to knock the smug grin off his face. I'd delivered essentially the same polemic a thousand times- in reference to Debra's work-and hearing it from this jerk in reference to mine made me go all hot and red inside.

'Look,' I said. 'If we don't do this, if we don't change things, they'll get changed for us. By someone else. The question, Dave, is whether a responsible custodian lets his custodianship be taken away from him, or whether he does everything he can to make sure that he's still around to ensure that his charge is properly cared for. Good custodianship isn't sticking your head in the sand.'

I could tell I wasn't doing any good. The mood of the crowd was getting darker, the faces more set. I resolved not to speak again until the meeting was done, no matter what the provocation.

Lil smoothed my remarks over, and fielded a dozen more, and it looked like the objections would continue all afternoon and all night and all the next day, and I felt woozy and overwrought and miserable all at the same time, staring at Lil and her harried smile and her nervous smoothing of her hair over her ears.

Finally, she called the question. By tradition, the votes were collected in secret and publicly tabulated over the data-channels. The group's eyes unfocussed as they called up HUDs and watched the totals as they rolled in. I was offline and unable to vote or watch.

At length, Lil heaved a relieved sigh and smiled, dropping her hands behind her back.

'All right then,' she said, over the crowd's buzz. 'Let's get to work.'

I stood up, saw Dan and Lil staring into each other's eyes, a meaningful glance between new lovers, and I saw red. Literally. My vision washed over pink, and a strobe pounded at the edges of my vision. I took two lumbering steps towards them and opened my mouth to say something horrible, and what came out was 'Waaagh.' My right side went numb and my leg slipped out from under me and I crashed to the floor.

The slatted light from the shutters cast its way across my chest as I tried to struggle up with my left arm, and then it all went black.

***

I wasn't nuts after all.

The doctor's office in the Main Street infirmary was clean and white and decorated with posters of Jiminy Cricket in doctors' whites with an outsized stethoscope. I came to on a hard pallet under a sign that reminded me to get a check-up twice a year, by gum! and I tried to bring my hands up to shield my eyes from the over bright light and the over-cheerful signage, and discovered that I couldn't move my arms. Further investigation revealed that this was because I was strapped down, in full-on four-point restraint.

'Waaagh,' I said again.

Dan's worried face swam into my field of vision, along with a serious-looking doctor, apparent 70, with a Norman Rockwell face full of crow'sfeet and smile-lines.

'Welcome back, Julius. I'm Doctor Pete,' the doctor said, in a kindly voice that matched the face. Despite my recent disillusion with castmember bullshit, I found his schtick comforting.

I slumped back against the palette while the doc shone lights in my eyes and consulted various diagnostic apparati. I bore it in stoic silence, too confounded by the horrible Waaagh sounds to attempt more speech. The doc would tell me what was going on when he was ready.

'Does he need to be tied up still?' Dan asked, and I shook my head urgently. Being tied up wasn't my idea of a good time.

The doc smiled kindly. 'I think it's for the best, for now. Don't worry, Julius, we'll have you up and about soon enough.'

Dan protested, but stopped when the doc threatened to send him out of the room. He took my hand