Brad ignores him. “The result of this intelligence is that a decision has been reached—and this comes from the top, so don’t shoot the messenger—to permanently shut down the 2.0 servers and return to a slight upgrade of version 1.6 we’re calling v1.6-plus. To this end, you will all need to green-screen again. That studio work commences at oh-eight-hundred. Report to studio six.”
“You’re downgrading us?” Philby says. “How do you expect—?”
“I expect, we expect, you to be team players. To do the best with what you’re given. And what you’re being given is a chance to set things right. To clear Wayne’s name. To stop whatever’s going on—which apparently includes Chernabog, the Evil Queen, and Tia Dalma.”
“What we’re being given is weakness,” Maybeck says.
“Vulnerability,” Willa adds. “In v1.6, our fear makes us solid, makes us suffer if we’re injured. It isn’t close to 2.0.”
“Deal with it,” Brad says, getting to his feet. “We know it’s a game changer, and we know you’re good at adapting. So we expect you to adapt.”
THE BLACK HELICOPTER from the Air Mobile Unit of the U.S. Border Patrol Special Operations Group rakes noisily across the night sky above the Calexico East border crossing. If the pilot hadn’t flown this route every night, the line of semi-trucks on the Mexico side might have surprised her. Five parallel lines of vehicles stretch back a third of a mile from the secure inspectors’ booths. Another twenty or so are grouped in a pullout area to the right, a large, well-lit parking lot where trucks have been randomly flagged for closer inspection.
Among these eighteen-wheelers is one from southwestern Mexico bound for Long Beach, California. The manifest lists its cargo as “Live Chickens.”
As the helicopter flies over, the three men arguing about who’s going to inspect this one are forced to pause. The aircraft flies east, the rattle of its rotors softening to a cicada’s buzz, then a mosquito’s whine, and finally a gnat’s whisper before its white flashing belly light vanishes.
The three Mexican Customs officers continue to bicker bitterly in Spanish.
“I am allergic to the chicken.”
“You are not going to eat it! Get in there!”
“It stinks.”
“You stink! Besides, the poo falls through the cages and the grate in the truck bed and down onto the highway. It’s not that bad.”
“Then you do it.”
“I am the senior officer.”
“I would do it,” says the third officer, “but I am afraid of chickens. Deathly afraid. When I was a child, my grandmother…Well, we were out at her farm and she wanted to cook us all tinga de pollo. We kids didn’t know that meant she was going to—you know, with a hatchet? I think I cried for a week.”
“You’re twenty-eight years old.”
“A moment like that does not ever leave you.”
“You two are pathetic,” says the senior officer. “I will do the chickens, but then I will take an extra break and both of you will work two extra trucks.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
Having come to an agreement, the two younger officers leave quickly before their chief changes his mind.
The short, pot bellied immigration officer lifts the dirty, rusted, oddly cold metal handles on the back of the eighteen-wheeler’s door.11 The officer shines his flashlight into the darkness and startles as he sees chicken feathers wafting down. He has never seen snow, but he imagines that this is what it must look like. He sets his flashlight on the truck bed and pulls himself up into the confined area. As he bends to retrieve his light, something rumbles in the bowels of the darkness.12 He has been well trained. He knows almost all the telltale signs of smuggling. He has seen blood spills, torn clothing; he is well familiar with the stench of unwashed bodies. But the massive hoof marks on the metal grate confuse him. Baffled, he creeps deeper into the trailer, peeking into every sliver of space among the cages of chickens. The cages can be arranged to create hiding places.13
What he sees next: where the hoof marks tighten, he spots jagged lines scratched into the metal grate. How heavy must an animal be to damage steel? Looking closer, he spots what appears to be animal hair snagged on a hook. Chickens don’t have hair. It’s his job to keep things like this from happening. His pulse quickens—it’s been a while since he’s seen any real action; his two subordinates will be jealous when they realize they passed up some excitement.14
Then, through the cages, the officer glimpses what can only be described as a crown. As light from the parking lot’s lamps penetrates the unnatural black of the trailer, rainbow prisms of color sparkle off the crown’s jewels. The officer is taken aback by a sudden rush of foul-smelling air—an eerie wind from inside the cages.15
His eyes adjust. The officer rubs a sweaty hand across his mouth and shuts his eyes tightly, hoping to un-see and un-hear what he’s just witnessed. He takes a quick, one-eyed peek and then whips his flashlight’s beam toward where he saw the crown. A scream lodges in his throat. He staggers backward.16
He hears a voice but is unsure if it’s a man’s or woman’s. It sounds vaguely French. It sounds…inviting. He knows he should fear it, should pull his gun or radio for help, but he wants to get closer.
His legs feel as if they’re moving on their own, though he’s in such a fog he can’t be sure. Why can’t he think clearly? Do the chickens carry some kind of virus? Should the whole truckload be quarantined? And why won’t his legs stop moving? He’s suddenly afraid, more afraid than he can ever remember being—petrified, although he’s not frozen in fear but marching like a stiff-legged soldier into the heart of danger.
He looks up. There, through the fluttering wings of nervous fowl, he catches repeated glimpses of…a pair of yellow bowling balls, each in its own cage. What the heck? No…it’s behind the chickens, behind the cages. And not bowling balls, not unless bowling balls can somehow move in unison as a synchronized pair.
It’s two large yellow eyes he sees staring at him through the stir of chicken feathers. Yellow eyes like melons cleaved in half. The involuntary movement of his legs suddenly grinds to a halt. Moments before his world goes black, the terrified officer notices two other figures lurking in the farthest corners of the truck, and if he didn’t know any better, he would swear one is wearing a jeweled crown. It wasn’t his imagination.17
In that instant he feels his body no longer his own—it’s as if he’s under a spell—and the chickens begin screeching; the wall of cages begins to shift, then suddenly splits open, sending cages full of panicked, squawking chickens tumbling to the floor. The guard can’t breathe; his body has shut down; he’s going to faint.
Those eyes belong to a monster! The thing steps forward, causing another blizzard of feathers. A giant open mouth appears, a black tongue as long as a human arm lolling out. The guard’s head is engulfed. His world goes black.…
Tia Dalma steps forward from behind the cages, observing the headless corpse lying on the grate. She looks up at Chernabog, back at the guard’s body. She shakes her head.
“Now, that’s a problem,” she says.
SOMETHING ISN’T RIGHT. Finn quietly shuts the door of the greenroom off Stage 6, trapping Charlene inside with him.
“What’s going on?” she asks. She’s chewing a protein bar, and indicates the closed door with her chin.
“Am I the only one who thinks it’s strange that they’re keeping us so busy we never leave the studio?”
“Hmm.”
“You hadn’t noticed?”
“Not really. But I guess you’re right.”
“As in: no trip to Disneyland?”
“It’s not as if it’s next door. It’s an hour’s drive or something. Besides, they need us for this mission, right?”
Finn looks out through a set of interior windows into the cavernous soundstage. The hangar-like structure is wider and longer than two football fields placed side by side, with a flat ceiling sixty feet overhead rigged to hold
cinema lights and equipment of every kind. The soundstage’s floor is gray-painted concrete, the walls black. The corner closest to the room he now occupies is cluttered with tripods bearing lighting panels, digital video cameras, and sound equipment. Behind is a wall of sturdy road cases on wheels, the type he’s seen at rock concerts. Thick cables run in an orderly fashion to a control room adjacent to the green room.
What makes the soundstage special is what Finn thinks must be the world’s largest green screen, a sheet of stretched fabric seventy-five yards long, suspended forty feet high. It curves forward at the bottom to meet the floor seamlessly so that, standing in front of it, the actor is entirely surrounded by a green background that editors can replace with any image they choose. It is here that the Keepers, wearing special motion-capture suits, gloves, and hoods, act out physical movement. Gymnastics equipment and wires support unusual motions such as flying or jumping long distances. At the moment, Maybeck is walking and squatting, walking and squatting. The work is repetitive and can be tedious.
Seeing Maybeck, Finn says, “I forgot how many motions our bodies make that we take for granted.”
“It’s so boring,” says the gymnast. “I only like it when we get to the wires and trampolines. And we’re at least a week away from that.”
“Speaking of which.” Finn lowers his voice. “We acted out three-quarters of this during shoots in Orlando. Why do we have to do it again?”
“Come on, they explained that—we’re bigger, older. You know.” She blushes. “We aren’t exactly kids anymore.”
“Yeah, I know what they said.”
“What’s bothering you, Finn?”
Charlene places her hand on Finn’s shoulder, and he feels the contact all the way down to his toes. He’s aware that she and Maybeck like each other; it’s impossible to miss. And for him, it’s all about Amanda. But Amanda isn’t around much, and when they are together, Amanda can overpower him. She’s intense, which is something he both likes and dislikes about her. Moments like this with Charlene remind him what a good listener she is. She’s thoughtful and caring, joyful and energetic. The truthful answer to her question is that not much bothers him when he’s with her. And the meaning of that used to confuse him.
But as he’s gotten older, he’s learned that his feelings—his true feelings—need to have rounded corners, not the sharp absolute edges he saw as a kid. You have to pad those corners, Finn thinks. Growing up means learning to fit the situation, to soften. Hard truth can embarrass, wound, or start avalanches.
“I think we’re prisoners,” he says, knowing Charlene can handle it. Maybeck would throw a fit. Philby and Willa would turn into Mr. Spock from Star Trek, analyzing Finn’s conclusion six ways to Sunday.
Charlene appears to consider Finn’s words only briefly. “I know what you mean.”
“Except, I’m serious. I think they’re holding us here. Why, I don’t know.”
“We’re green-screening around the clock to get our 1.6-plus DHIs onto the servers.”
He appreciates her pragmatism.
“Have you asked to leave?” she says.
“No.”
“See? You have to ask.”
“I’d need a good reason. Otherwise, they’re smart enough to know I’d be testing their authority.”
“But that’s the point. Right? There is no good reason to leave. We have work to do.”
“I suppose.”
“I know that voice. You think I’m stupid.”
“Not at all. Never!” He turns and faces her. They’re too close. Finn takes a step back. Charlene takes a step forward and he doesn’t know if she’s trying to tell him something about her feelings or if she wants to stand closer as they talk. “This isn’t random, Charlie. I wanted to speak to you about it first.” He can see flattery, confusion, even concern on her face. It passes faster than a fleeting shadow.
“Finn…”
She’s read things into his words. Things that are probably there, things neither wants to confront. He’s opened some box; now he slams it shut as quickly as possible. “Because you’re levelheaded,” he says, clearing the air. “You don’t overthink this kind of thing or overreact.”
“Like some people we know.”
She’s blushing scarlet, Finn notices. There are too many levels of meaning to the simplest of words; Finn sets traps unintentionally and then walks into them himself. “Exactly!” he says. “But you and I get each other.”
“It’s true.”
“I don’t want to freak anyone out.”
“You mention this, and you will.”
“Exactly!” He’s nodding so vigorously his neck hurts. “That’s what I mean!”
“Still, you need to come up with a plan,” she says bluntly. “It’s what you do, Finn. If you’re going to get all conspiracy theory on us, then you need to tell us how to figure it out.”
Her words hit him like a slap across the cheek. It started with Wayne telling him he was the natural leader. A lot has changed since then. Philby was a Wayne favorite for a while, but never exactly the Keepers’ leader. Finn never asked for the role, but has to concede he’s stuck with it. “I suppose.”
“A plan,” she repeats. She finishes her protein bar, wipes her hands on some tissues.
“If we’re going to find out the truth about Wayne, we’re going to have to do it ourselves.”
“That right there is what I call a good place to start. Maybe you keep this whole prisoner thing to yourself and we start by helping Wayne. Everyone’s going to support that.”
“Even if it means breaking the rules?”
Her forehead wrinkles but her eyes brighten. “Since when has that ever stopped us?”
* * *
“We’re going to Disneyland,” Finn says.
For their lunch break, they’ve gathered in the Morgue, a space not unlike the Crypt in that it’s accessed via the same underground tunnel, has a similar oversize metal door on tracks (currently closed), and is cluttered, floor to ceiling. The Morgue floor plan includes file cabinets and standing wooden racks that hold oversize artwork. It’s like an art museum archive left unattended for decades, the walls a collage of everything from watercolors by famed Disney illustrator Mary Blair to sketches by the veteran animators fondly known as the Nine Old Men.
“We’re going to find Wayne. On our own. Starting tonight, if Philby and Willa can manage to cross us over.”
Philby and Willa engage in a rapid conversation, all whispered. Philby acts as their spokesperson. “We can’t engage our own server. The Imagineers have every conceivable security measure in place to detect new servers coming online.”
“Leaving us to work with what we have,” Willa says, clearly irritating her partner.
“The existing servers are currently in use to project our DHI hosts within Disneyland.” Philby takes over, but he goes on too long, trying to convey how tricky and difficult this will be. Only Willa has any idea what he’s talking about, and even she looks dazed by the time he stops.
“We can or we can’t?” Finn asks once Philby winds down.
“The server runs a full virus scan every night. It takes a little over ninety minutes, auto-locks, and shuts down, powering back up two hours before the park opens. I can make it look like it’s running its scan when it’ll actually be running a limited version of v1.6 in the background over a proxy. Our old imaging, not the new stuff. And likely a low-res version at that. We can be full bandwidth for those ninety minutes. If we’re still crossed over when the server auto-locks, we’ll be SBS until sometime around six in the morning.”
“They don’t wake us up until six-thirty anyway,” Maybeck says.
“Yeah, but if we’re in the syndrome, then we aren’t moving. We aren’t responding. Willa and I,” Charlene says, gesturing to her roommate with a flick of her head, “heard someone come in around three in the morning and check up on us.”
“Let’s hope they don’t challenge you to a game of cards,” Maybeck say
s. “Sleep of the dead—that about describes what we’re like when we’re crossed over.”
“I’m just saying,” Charlene says.
Finn doesn’t want his plan defeated and has to fight back a rush of emotion. Confronted by Charlene’s honesty, he feels betrayed.
Philby says, “If the Cryptologists figure out we’re crossed over, the first thing they’ll do is shut down the DHI server while they prepare to code in a subroutine to allow for manual override.”
“English, please!” Maybeck says.
“We’ll be stuck in 1.6 SBS,” says Willa, looking to Maybeck, “same as you were in Space Mountain.”
“That was not pretty,” Maybeck says. “I got so…So tired. I don’t know if I could have fought off OTs the way I felt.”
“We’ll find out,” Finn says.
“What makes you think we can find Wayne?” Willa asks. Of the five Keepers, she seems the most skeptical about Finn’s plan.
“You do, actually,” Finn says.
Willa looks at him quizzically.
“You made a friend in Hollywood Studios who I think could help us.”
“Ariel!” Willa and Charlene say nearly in unison.
“For those of us who believe in empirical evidence,” Philby says, “I’d suggest we search for the demons and wraiths from the other night, because they were directly connected to Wayne.”
“A Halloween shop!” Maybeck snipes.
Philby stares him down. “Close.” Of all the Keepers, the pragmatic Philby struggles the most with Maybeck’s irreverent attitude. “Home of the dead and house of the supernatural wraiths and demons.”
“Haunted Mansion,” Willa says.
* * *
The afternoon green-screen work for the Crypt involves only Maybeck and Finn, which gives the other Keepers the afternoon off. At dinner, taken in the commissary, a buzz passes among the five of them. It’s nearly as palpable as static electricity—they dare not get too close. Thankfully, no one but Brad knows them well enough to see this change, and Brad is working in the control room on Stage 6 compiling source code.
Kingdom Keepers VII Page 8
