Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Keeping low, I stepped over the fence and duck-walked down the embankment, then slipped into the water and sloshed across to the Adventureland side.

Slipping along to the Liberty Square gateway, I flattened myself in doorways whenever I heard maintenance crews passing in the distance, until I reached the Hall of Presidents, and in a twinkling I was inside the theater itself.

Humming the Small World theme, I produced a short wrecking bar from my cowl's tabbed pocket and set to work.

The primary broadcast units were hidden behind a painted scrim over the stage, and they were surprisingly well built for a first generation tech. I really worked up a sweat smashing them, but I kept at it until not a single component remained recognizable. The work was slow and loud in the silent Park, but it lulled me into a sleepy reverie, an autohypnotic swing-bang-swing-bang timeless time. To be on the safe side, I grabbed the storage units and slipped them into the cowl.

Locating their backup units was a little trickier, but years of hanging out at the Hall of Presidents while Lil tinkered with the animatronics helped me. I methodically investigated every nook, cranny and storage area until I located them, in what had been a break-room closet. By now, I had the rhythm of the thing, and I made short work of them.

I did one more pass, wrecking anything that looked like it might be a prototype for the next generation or notes that would help them reconstruct the units I'd smashed.

I had no illusions about Debra's preparedness-she'd have something offsite that she could get up and running in a few days. I wasn't doing anything permanent, I was just buying myself a day or two.

I made my way clean out of the Park without being spotted, and sloshed my way into my runabout, shoes leaking water from the moat.

For the first time in weeks, I slept like a baby.

***

Of course, I got caught. I don't really have the temperament for Machiavellian shenanigans, and I left a trail a mile wide, from the muddy footprints in the Contemporary's lobby to the wrecking bar thoughtlessly left behind, with my cowl and the storage units from the Hall, forgotten on the back seat of my runabout.

I whistled my personal jazzy uptempo version of 'Grim Grinning Ghosts' as I made my way from Costuming, through the utilidor, out to Liberty Square, half an hour before the Park opened.

Standing in front of me were Lil and Debra. Debra was holding my cowl and wrecking bar. Lil held the storage units.

I hadn't put on my transdermals that morning, and so the emotion I felt was unmuffled, loud and yammering.

I ran.

I ran past them, along the road to Adventureland, past the Tiki Room where I'd been killed, past the Adventureland gate where I'd waded through the moat, down Main Street. I ran and ran, elbowing early guests, trampling flowers, knocking over an apple cart across from the Penny Arcade.

I ran until I reached the main gate, and turned, thinking I'd outrun Lil and Debra and all my problems. I'd thought wrong. They were both there, a step behind me, puffing and red. Debra held my wrecking bar like a weapon, and she brandished it at me.

'You're a goddamn idiot, you know that?' she said. I think if we'd been alone, she would've swung it at me.

'Can't take it when someone else plays rough, huh, Debra?' I sneered.

Lil shook her head disgustedly. 'She's right, you are an idiot. The ad-hoc's meeting in Adventureland. You're coming.'

'Why?' I asked, feeling belligerent. 'You going to honor me for all my hard work?'

'We're going to talk about the future, Julius, what's left of it for us.'

'For God's sake, Lil, can't you see what's going on? They killed me! They did it, and now we're fighting each other instead of her! Why can't you see how wrong that is?'

'You'd better watch those accusations, Julius,' Debra said, quietly and intensely, almost hissing. 'I don't know who killed you or why, but you're the one who's guilty here. You need help.'

I barked a humorless laugh. Guests were starting to stream into the now-open Park, and several of them were watching intently as the three costumed castmembers shouted at each other. I could feel my Whuffie hemorrhaging. 'Debra, you are purely full of shit, and your work is trite and unimaginative. You're a fucking despoiler and you don't even have the guts to admit it.'

'That's enough, Julius,' Lil said, her face hard, her rage barely in check. 'We're going.'

Debra walked a pace behind me, Lil a pace before, all the way through the crowd to Adventureland. I saw a dozen opportunities to slip into a gap in the human ebb and flow and escape custody, but I didn't try. I wanted a chance to tell the whole world what I'd done and why I'd done it.

Debra followed us in when we mounted the steps to the meeting room. Lil turned. 'I don't think you should be here, Debra,' she said in measured tones.

Debra shook her head. 'You can't keep me out, you know. And you shouldn't want to. We're on the same side.'

I snorted derisively, and I think it decided Lil. 'Come on, then,' she said.

It was SRO in the meeting room, packed to the gills with the entire ad-hoc, except for my new recruits. No work was being done on the rehab, then, and the Liberty Belle would be sitting at her dock. Even the restaurant crews were there. Liberty Square must've been a ghost town. It gave the meeting a sense of urgency: the knowledge that there were guests in Liberty Square wandering aimlessly, looking for castmembers to help them out. Of course, Debra's crew might've been around.

The crowd's faces were hard and bitter, leaving no doubt in my mind that I was in deep shit. Even Dan, sitting in the front row, looked angry. I nearly started crying right then. Dan-oh, Dan. My pal, my confidant, my patsy, my rival, my nemesis. Dan, Dan, Dan. I wanted to beat him to death and hug him at the same time.

Lil took the podium and tucked stray hairs behind her ears. 'All right, then,' she said. I stood to her left and Debra stood to her right.

'Thanks for coming out today. I'd like to get this done quickly. We all have important work to get to. I'll run down the facts: last night, a member of this ad-hoc vandalized the Hall of Presidents, rendering it useless. It's estimated that it will take at least a week to get it back up and running.

'I don't have to tell you that this isn't acceptable. This has never happened before, and it will never happen again. We're going to see to that.

'I'd like to propose that no further work be done on the Mansion until the Hall of Presidents is fully operational. I will be volunteering my services on the repairs.'

There were nods in the audience. Lil wouldn't be the only one working at the Hall that week. 'Disney World isn't a competition,' Lil said. 'All the different ad-hocs work together, and we do it to make the Park as good as we can. We lose sight of that at our peril.'

I nearly gagged on bile. 'I'd like to say something,' I said, as calmly as I could manage.

Lil shot me a look. 'That's fine, Julius. Any member of the ad-hoc can speak.'

I took a deep breath. 'I did it, all right?' I said. My voice cracked. 'I did it, and I don't have any excuse for having done it. It may not have been the smartest thing I've ever done, but I think you all should understand how I was driven to it.

'We're not supposed to be in competition with one another here, but we all know that that's just a polite fiction. The truth is that there's real competition in the Park, and that the hardest players are the crew that rehabbed the Hall of Presidents. They stole the Hall from you! They did it while you were distracted, they used me to engineer the distraction, they murdered me!' I heard the shriek creeping into my voice, but I couldn't do anything about it.