Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

by Cory Doctorow

sprawled onthe sofa in my underwear, all gamy and baggy and bloodshot.

  "Hey, Dan. How's it goin'?"

  He gave me one of his patented wry looks and I felt the same weirdreversal of roles that we'd undergone at the U of T, when he had becomethe native, and I had become the interloper. He was the together onewith the wry looks and I was the pathetic seeker who'd burned all hisreputation capital. Out of habit, I checked my Whuffie, and a momentlater I stopped being startled by its low score and was instead shockedby the fact that I could check it at all. I was back online!

  "Now, what do you know about that?" I said, staring at my dismalWhuffie.

  "What?" he said.

  I called his cochlea. "My systems are back online," I subvocalized.

  He started. "You were offline?"

  I jumped up from the couch and did a little happy underwear dance. "I_was_, but I'm not _now_." I felt better than I had in days, ready tobeat the world -- or at least Debra.

  "Let me take a shower, then let's get to the Imagineering labs. I've gota pretty kickass idea."

  #

  The idea, as I explained it in the runabout, was a preemptive rehab ofthe Mansion. Sabotaging the Hall had been a nasty, stupid idea, and I'dgotten what I deserved for it. The whole point of the Bitchun Societywas to be more reputable than the next ad-hoc, to succeed on merit, nottrickery, despite assassinations and the like.

  So a rehab it would be.

  "Back in the early days of the Disneyland Mansion, in California," Iexplained, "Walt had a guy in a suit of armor just past the first DoomBuggy curve, he'd leap out and scare the hell out of the guests as theywent by. It didn't last long, of course. The poor bastard kept gettingpunched out by startled guests, and besides, the armor wasn't toocomfortable for long shifts."

  Dan chuckled appreciatively. The Bitchun Society had all but done awaywith any sort of dull, repetitious labor, and what remained -- tendingbar, mopping toilets -- commanded Whuffie aplenty and a life of leisurein your off-hours.

  "But that guy in the suit of armor, he could _improvise_. You'd get aslightly different show every time. It's like the castmembers who spielon the Jungleboat Cruise. They've each got their own patter, their ownjokes, and even though the animatronics aren't so hot, it makes the showworth seeing."

  "You're going to fill the Mansion with castmembers in armor?" Dan asked,shaking his head.

  I waved away his objections, causing the runabout to swerve, terrifyinga pack of guests who were taking a ride on rented bikes around theproperty. "No," I said, flapping a hand apologetically at the white-faced guests. "Not at all. But what if all of the animatronics had humanoperators -- telecontrollers, working with waldoes? We'll let theminteract with the guests, talk with them, scare them. . . We'll get ridof 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 once, ten shifts per day, each ofthem caught up in our Mansion. . . We'll give out awards for outstandingperformances, the shifts'll be based on popular vote. In effect, we'llbe adding another ten thousand guests to the Mansion's throughput everyday, only these guests will be honorary castmembers."

  "That's pretty good," Dan said. "Very Bitchun. Debra may have AI andflash-baking, but you'll have human interaction, courtesy of the biggestMansion-fans in the world --"

  "And those are the very fans Debra'll have to win over to make a playfor the Mansion. Very elegant, huh?"

  #

  The first order of business was to call Lil, patch things up, and pitchthe idea to her. The only problem was, my cochlea was offline again. Mymood started to sour, and I had Dan call her instead.

  We met her up at Imagineering, a massive complex of prefab aluminumbuildings painted Go-Away Green that had thronged with mad inventorssince the Bitchun Society had come to Walt Disney World. The ad-hocs whohad built an Imagineering department in Florida and now ran the thingwere the least political in the Park, classic labcoat-and-clipboardtypes who would work for anyone so long as the ideas were cool. Notcaring about Whuffie meant that they accumulated it in plenty on boththe left and right hands.

  Lil was working with Suneep, AKA the Merch Miracle. He could design,prototype and produce a souvenir faster than anyone -- shirts,sculptures, pens, toys, housewares, he was the king. They werecollaborating on their HUDs, facing each other across a lab-bench in themiddle of a lab as big as a basketball court, cluttered with logomarkedtchotchkes and gabbling away while their eyes danced over invisiblescreens.

  Dan reflexively joined the collaborative space as he entered the lab,leaving me the only one out on the joke. Dan was clearly delighted bywhat he saw.

  I nudged him with an elbow. "Make a hardcopy," I hissed.

  Instead of pitying me, he just airtyped a few commands and pages startedto roll out of a printer in the lab's corner. Anyone else would havemade a big deal out of it, but he just brought me into the discussion.

  If I needed proof that Lil and I were meant for each other, the designsshe and Suneep had come up with were more than enough. She'd beenthinking just the way I had -- souvenirs that stressed the human scaleof the Mansion. There were miniature animatronics of the HitchhikingGhosts in a black-light box, their skeletal robotics visible throughtheir layers of plastic clothing; action figures that communicated byIR, so that placing one in proximity with another would unlock itsMansion-inspired behaviors -- the raven cawed, Mme. Leota's headincanted, the singing busts sang. She'd worked up some formal attirebased on the castmember costume, cut in this year's stylish lines.

  It was good merch, is what I'm trying to say. In my mind's eye, I wasseeing the relaunch of the Mansion in six months, filled with roboticavatars of Mansion-nuts the world 'round, Mme. Leota's gift cart piledhigh with brilliant swag, strolling human players ad-libbing with theguests in the queue area. . .

  Lil looked up from her mediated state and glared at me as I pored overthe hardcopy, nodding enthusiastically.

  "Passionate enough for you?" she snapped.

  I felt a flush creeping into face, my ears. It was somewhere betweenanger and shame, and I reminded myself that I was more than a centuryolder than her, and it was my responsibility to be mature. Also, I'dstarted the fight.

  "This is fucking fantastic, Lil," I said. Her look didn't soften."Really choice stuff. I had a great idea --" I ran it down for her, theavatars, the robots, the rehab. She stopped glaring, started takingnotes, smiling, showing me her dimples, her slanted eyes crinkling atthe corners.

  "This isn't easy," she said, finally. Suneep, who'd been politelypretending not to listen in, nodded involuntarily. Dan, too.

  "I know that," I said. The flush burned hotter. "But that's the point --what Debra does isn't easy either. It's risky, dangerous. It made herand her ad-hoc better -- it made them sharper." _Sharper than us, that'sfor sure_. "They can make decisions like this fast, and execute themjust as quickly. We need to be able to do that, too."

  Was I really advocating being more like Debra? The words'd just poppedout, but I saw that I'd been right -- we'd have to beat Debra at her owngame, out-evolve her ad-hocs.

  "I understand what you're saying," Lil said. I could tell she was upset-- she'd reverted to castmemberspeak. "It's a very good idea. I thinkthat we stand a good chance of making it happen if we approach the groupand put it to them, after doing the research, building the plans, layingout the critical path, and privately soliciting feedback from some ofthem."

  I felt like I was swimming in molasses. At the rate that the LibertySquare ad-hoc moved, we'd be holding formal requirements reviews whileDebra's people tore down the Mansion around us. So I tried a differenttactic.

  "Suneep, you've been involved in some rehabs, right?"

  Suneep nodded slowly, with a cautious expression, a nonpolitical animalbeing drawn into a political discussion.

  "Okay, so tell me, if we came to you with this plan and asked you topull together a production schedule -- one that didn't have any review,just take the idea and ru
n with it -- and then pull it off, how longwould it take you to execute it?"

  Lil smiled primly. She'd dealt with Imagineering before.

  "About five years," he said, almost instantly.

  "Five years?" I squawked. "Why five years? Debra's people overhauled theHall in a month!"

  "Oh, wait," he said. "No review at all?"

  "No review. Just come up with the best way you can to do this, and doit. And we can provide you with unlimited, skilled labor, three shiftsaround the clock."

  He rolled his eyes back and ticked off days on his fingers