Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

by Cory Doctorow

nuts.

  She shat herself. She pulled her hair. She cut herself with knives. Sheaccused me of plotting to kill her. She set fire to the neighbors'apartments, wrapped herself in plastic sheeting, dry-humped thefurniture.

  She went nuts. She did it in broad strokes, painting the walls of ourbedroom with her blood, jagging all night through rant after rant. Ismiled and nodded and faced it for as long as I could, then I grabbedher and hauled her, kicking like a mule, to the doctor's office on thesecond floor. She'd been dirtside for a year and nuts for a month, butit took me that long to face up to it.

  The doc diagnosed nonchemical dysfunction, which was by way of sayingthat it was her mind, not her brain, that was broken. In other words,I'd driven her nuts.

  You can get counseling for nonchemical dysfunction, basically trying totalk it out, learn to feel better about yourself. She didn't want to.

  She was miserable, suicidal, murderous. In the brief moments of luciditythat she had under sedation, she consented to being restored from abackup that was made before we came to Toronto.

  I was at her side in the hospital when she woke up. I had prepared awritten synopsis of the events since her last backup for her, and sheread it over the next couple days.

  "Julius," she said, while I was making breakfast in our subterraneanapartment. She sounded so serious, so fun-free, that I knew immediatelythat the news wouldn't be good.

  "Yes?" I said, setting out plates of bacon and eggs, steaming cups ofcoffee.

  "I'm going to go back to space, and revert to an older version." She hada shoulderbag packed, and she had traveling clothes on.

  _Oh, shit._ "Great," I said, with forced cheerfulness, making a mentalinventory of my responsibilities dirtside. "Give me a minute or two,I'll pack up. I miss space, too."

  She shook her head, and anger blazed in her utterly scrutable hazeleyes. "No. I'm going back to who I was, before I met you."

  It hurt, bad. I had loved the old, steeplechase Zed, had loved her funand mischief. The Zed she'd become after we wed was terrible andterrifying, but I'd stuck with her out of respect for the person she'dbeen.

  Now she was off to restore herself from a backup made before she met me.She was going to lop 18 months out of her life, start over again, revertto a saved version.

  Hurt? It ached like a motherfucker.

  I went back to the station a month later, and saw her jamming in thesphere with a guy who had three extra sets of arms depending from hiships. He scuttled around the sphere while she played a jig on the piano,and when her silver eyes lit on me, there wasn't a shred of recognitionin them. She'd never met me.

  I died some, too, putting the incident out of my head and sojourning toDisney World, there to reinvent myself with a new group of friends, anew career, a new life. I never spoke of Zed again -- especially not toLil, who hardly needed me to pollute her with remembrances of my crazyexes.

  #

  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 rehabpast 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 stationin the main lobby. The platform was jammed with happy guests, bright andcheerful and ready for a day of steady, hypermediated fun. I tried tomake myself attend to them as individuals, but try as I might, they keptturning into a crowd, and I had to plant my feet firmly on the platformto keep from weaving among them to the edge, the better to snag a seat.

  The meeting was being held over the Sunshine Tree Terrace inAdventureland, just steps from where I'd been turned into a road-pizzaby the still-unidentified assassin. The Adventureland ad-hocs owed theLiberty 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 Floridasun 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, alow-key ambient buzz from two of the Park's oldest rides.

  There were almost a hundred ad-hocs in the Liberty Square crew, almostall second-gen castmembers with big, friendly smiles. They filled theroom to capacity, and there was much hugging and handshaking before themeeting came to order. I was thankful that the room was too small forthe _de rigeur_ ad-hoc circle-of-chairs, so that Lil was able to standat a podium and command a smidge of respect.

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

  The ad-hocs roared back a collective, "Hi, Lil!" and laughed at theirown corny tradition. Oh, they sure were a barrel of laughs at the MagicKingdom.

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

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

  I cut in. "Tonight. After this meeting. We're on an eight-weekproduction schedule, and the sooner we start, the sooner it'll befinished."

  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 streamlinedprocess. 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 itaround in a couple months, too. That's why we're not spending as muchtime planning as we usually do. It won't take five years for the idea toprove out, so the risks are lower."

  Another castmember, a woman, apparent 40 with a round, motherly demeanorsaid, "I'm all for moving fast -- Lord knows, our pacing hasn't alwaysbeen that hot. But I'm concerned about all these new people you proposeto recruit -- won't having more people slow us down when it comes tomaking new decisions?"

  _No_, I thought sourly, _because the people I'm bringing in aren'taddicted to meetings_.

  Lil nodded. "That's a good point, Lisa. The offer we're making to thetelepresence players is probationary -- they don't get to vote untilafter 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 hisspiel about half the time. "Lillian," he said, smiling sadly at her, "Ithink you're really making a big mistake here. We love the Mansion, allof us, and so do the guests. It's a piece of history, and we're itscustodians, not its masters. Changing it like this, well. . ." he shookhis head. "It's not good stewardship. If the guests wanted to walkthrough a funhouse with guys jumping out of the shadows saying 'booga-booga,' they'd go to one of the Halloween Houses in their hometowns. TheMansion'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 essentiallythe same polemic a thousand times -- in reference to Debra's work -- andhearing it from this jerk in reference to _mine_ made me go all hot andred inside.

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

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

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

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

  At length, Lil heaved a relieved sigh and smiled, dropping her handsbehind 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,