Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

by Cory Doctorow

had a bubbly, flirty vibe that made me dismissher, at first, as just another airhead castmember.

  Her parents -- Tom and Rita -- on the other hand, were fascinatingpeople, members of the original ad-hoc that had seized power in WaltDisney World, wresting control from a gang of wealthy formershareholders who'd been operating it as their private preserve. Rita wasapparent 20 or so, but she radiated a maturity and a fiery devotion tothe Park that threw her daughter's superficiality into sharp relief.

  They throbbed with Whuffie, Whuffie beyond measure, beyond use. In aworld where even a zeroed-out Whuffie loser could eat, sleep, travel andaccess the net without hassle, their wealth was more than sufficient torepeatedly access the piffling few scarce things left on earth over andover.

  The conversation turned to the first day, when she and her pals had useda cutting torch on the turnstiles and poured in, wearing homemadecostumes and name tags. They infiltrated the shops, the control centers,the rides, first by the hundred, then, as the hot July day ticked by, bythe thousand. The shareholders' lackeys -- who worked the Park for thechance to be a part of the magic, even if they had no control over themanagement decisions -- put up a token resistance. Before the day wasout, though, the majority had thrown in their lots with the raiders,handing over security codes and pitching in.

  "But we knew the shareholders wouldn't give in as easy as that," Lil'smother said, sipping her lemonade. "We kept the Park running 24/7 forthe next two weeks, never giving the shareholders a chance to fight backwithout doing it in front of the guests. We'd prearranged with a coupleof airline ad-hocs to add extra routes to Orlando and the guests camepouring in." She smiled, remembering the moment, and her features inrepose were Lil's almost identically. It was only when she was talkingthat her face changed, muscles tugging it into an expression decadesolder than the face that bore it.

  "I spent most of the time running the merch stand at Madame Leota'soutside the Mansion, gladhanding the guests while hissing nasties backand forth with the shareholders who kept trying to shove me out. I sleptin a sleeping bag on the floor of the utilidor, with a couple dozenothers, in three hour shifts. That was when I met this asshole" -- shechucked her husband on the shoulder -- "he'd gotten the wrong sleepingbag by mistake and wouldn't budge when I came down to crash. I justcrawled in next to him and the rest, as they say, is history."

  Lil rolled her eyes and made gagging noises. "Jesus, Rita, no one needsto hear about that part of it."

  Tom patted her arm. "Lil, you're an adult -- if you can't stomachhearing about your parents' courtship, you can either sit somewhere elseor grin and bear it. But you don't get to dictate the topic ofconversation."

  Lil gave us adults a very youthful glare and flounced off. Rita shookher head at Lil's departing backside. "There's not much fire in thatgeneration," she said. "Not a lot of passion. It's our fault -- wethought that Disney World would be the best place to raise a child inthe Bitchun Society. Maybe it was, but. . ." She trailed off and rubbedher palms on her thighs, a gesture I'd come to know in Lil, by and by."I guess there aren't enough challenges for them these days. They're toocooperative." She laughed and her husband took her hand.

  "We sound like our parents," Tom said. "'When we were growing up, wedidn't have any of this newfangled life-extension stuff -- we took ourchances with the cave bears and the dinosaurs!'" Tom wore himself older,apparent 50, with graying sidewalls and crinkled smile-lines, the betterto present a non-threatening air of authority to the guests. It was atruism among the first-gen ad-hocs that women castmembers should wearthemselves young, men old. "We're just a couple of Bitchunfundamentalists, I guess."

  Lil called over from a nearby conversation: "Are they telling you what apack of milksops we are, Julius? When you get tired of that, why don'tyou come over here and have a smoke?" I noticed that she and her cohortwere passing a crack pipe.

  "What's the use?" Lil's mother sighed.

  "Oh, I don't know that it's as bad as all that," I said, virtually myfirst words of the afternoon. I was painfully conscious that I was onlythere by courtesy, just one of the legion of hopefuls who flocked toOrlando every year, aspiring to a place among the ruling cliques."They're passionate about maintaining the Park, that's for sure. I madethe mistake of lifting a queue-gate at the Jungleboat Cruise last weekand I got a very earnest lecture about the smooth functioning of thePark from a castmember who couldn't have been more than 18. I think thatthey don't have the passion for creating Bitchunry that we have -- theydon't need it -- but they've got plenty of drive to maintain it."

  Lil's mother gave me a long, considering look that I didn't know what tomake of. I couldn't tell if I had offended her or what.

  "I mean, you can't be a revolutionary after the revolution, can you?Didn't we all struggle so that kids like Lil wouldn't have to?"

  "Funny you should say that," Tom said. He had the same considering lookon his face. "Just yesterday we were talking about the very same thing.We were talking --" he drew a breath and looked askance at his wife, whonodded -- "about deadheading. For a while, anyway. See if things changedmuch in fifty or a hundred years."

  I felt a kind of shameful disappointment. Why was I wasting my timeschmoozing with these two, when they wouldn't be around when the timecame to vote me in? I banished the thought as quickly as it came -- Iwas talking to them because they were nice people. Not everyconversation had to be strategically important.

  "Really? Deadheading." I remember that I thought of Dan then, about hisviews on the cowardice of deadheading, on the bravery of ending it whenyou found yourself obsolete. He'd comforted me once, when my last livingrelative, my uncle, opted to go to sleep for three thousand years. Myuncle had been born pre-Bitchun, and had never quite gotten the hang ofit. Still, he was my link to my family, to my first adulthood and myonly childhood. Dan had taken me to Gananoque and we'd spent the daybounding around the countryside on seven-league boots, sailing high overthe lakes of the Thousand Islands and the crazy fiery carpet of autumnleaves. We topped off the day at a dairy commune he knew where theystill made cheese from cow's milk and there'd been a thousand smells andbottles of strong cider and a girl whose name I'd long since forgottenbut whose exuberant laugh I'd remember forever. And it wasn't soimportant, then, my uncle going to sleep for three milliennia, becausewhatever happened, there were the leaves and the lakes and the crispsunset the color of blood and the girl's laugh.

  "Have you talked to Lil about it?"

  Rita shook her head. "It's just a thought, really. We don't want toworry her. She's not good with hard decisions -- it's her generation."

  They changed the subject not long thereafter, and I sensed discomfort,knew that they had told me too much, more than they'd intended. Idrifted off and found Lil and her young pals, and we toked a little andcuddled a little.

  Within a month, I was working at the Haunted Mansion, Tom and Rita wereinvested in Canopic jars in Kissimee with instructions not to be wokenuntil their newsbots grabbed sufficient interesting material to make itworth their while, and Lil and I were a hot item.

  Lil didn't deal well with her parents' decision to deadhead. For her, itwas a slap in the face, a reproach to her and her generation oftwittering Polyannic castmembers.

  For God's sake, Lil, don't you ever get fucking angry about anything?Don't you have any goddamned passion?

  The words were out of my mouth before I knew I was saying them, and Lil,15 percent of my age, young enough to be my great-granddaughter; Lil, mylover and best friend and sponsor to the Liberty Square ad-hocracy; Lilturned white as a sheet, turned on her heel and walked out of thekitchen. She got in her runabout and went to the Park to take her shift.

  I went back to bed and stared at the ceiling fan as it made its lazyturns, and felt like shit.

  ========= CHAPTER 5 =========

  When I finally returned to the Park, 36 hours had passed and Lil had notcome back to the house. If she'd tried to call, she would've gotten myvoicemail -- I had no way of answering my phone. As it turned out, shehadn't been t
rying to reach me at all.

  I'd spent the time alternately moping, drinking, and plotting terrible,irrational vengeance on Debra for killing me, destroying myrelationship, taking away my beloved (in hindsight, anyway) Hall ofPresidents and threatening the Mansion. Even in my addled state, I knewthat this was pretty unproductive, and I kept promising that I would cutit out, take a shower and some sober-ups, and get to work at theMansion.

  I was working up the energy to do just that when Dan came in.

  "Jesus," he said, shocked. I guess I was a bit of a mess,