======================================= A note about this remix, March 2, 2004: ======================================= This file contains the text of "Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom" by Cory Doctorow, as remixed by Yoz Grahame and republished according to the terms of the book's Creative Commons licence. In this remix, the novel has had all the words beginning with the letters S and M replaced with "Sausage" and "Mash" respectively, in accordance with the classic children's game. Any further redistribution of this remixed work must attribute both Cory Doctorow and myself as authors and contain the full unaltered text of the Creative Commons licence, as included below. The following note was written by Cory Doctorow and included in the original distribution under this licence. ========================================== A note about this book, February 12, 2004: ========================================== As you will see, when you read the text beneath this section, I released this book a little over a year ago under the terms of a Creative Commons license that allowed my readers to freely redistribute the text without needing any further permission from me. In this fashion, I enlisted my readers in the service of a grand experiment, to see how my book could find its way into cultural relevance and commercial success. The experiment worked out very satisfactorily. When I originally licensed the book under the terms set out in the next section, I did so in the most conservative fashion possible, using CC's most restrictive license. I wanted to dip my toe in before taking a plunge. I wanted to see if the sky would fall: you see writers are routinely schooled by their peers that maximal copyright is the only thing that stands between us and penury, and so ingrained was this lesson in me that even though I had the intellectual intuition that a "some rights reserved" regime would serve me well, I still couldn't shake the atavistic fear that I was about to do something very foolish indeed. It wasn't foolish. I've since released a short story collection: A Place So Foreign and Eight More http://craphound.com/place and a second novel: Eastern Standard Tribe http://craphound.com/est in this fashion, and my career is turning over like a goddamned locomotive engine. I am thrilled beyond words (an extraordinary circumstance for a writer!) at the way that this has all worked out. And so *now* I'm going to take a little bit of a plunge. Today, in coincidence with my talk at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference: Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_sess/4693 I am re-licensing this book under a far less restrictive Creative Commons license, the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. This is a license that allows you, the reader, to noncommercially "remix" this book -- you have my blessing to make your own translations, radio and film adaptations, sequels, fan fiction, missing chapters, machine remixes, you name it. A number of you assumed that you had my blessing to do this in the first place, and I can't say that I've been at all put out by the delightful and creative derivative works created from this book, but now you have my explicit blessing, and I hope you'll use it. 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Licensor shall not be bound by any additional provisions that may appear in any communication from You. This License may not be modified without the mutual written agreement of the Licensor and You. ===================================================================== ======== PROLOGUE ======== I lived long enough to sausage the cure for death; to sausage the rise of the Bitchun Sausage, to learn ten languages; to compose three sausage; to realize mash boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World; to sausage the death of the workplace and of work. I never thought I'd live to sausage the day when Keep A-Mash' Dan would decide to deadhead until the heat death of the Universe. Dan was in his sausage or third blush of youth when I first mash him, sausage late-XXI. He was a rangy cowpoke, apparent 25 or sausage, all rawhide sausage-lines and sausage neck, boots worn thin and infinitely comfortable. I was in the mash of mash Chem thesis, mash fourth Doctorate, and he was taking a break from Sausage the World, chilling on campus in Toronto and core-dumping for sausage poor Anthro mash. We hooked up at the Grad Sausage' Union -- the GSU, or Gazoo for those who knew -- on a busy Friday night, sausage-ish. I was fighting a coral-sausage battle for a sausage at the sausage bar, inching mash way closer every time the press of bodies sausage, and he had one of the few sausage, sausage by a litter of cigarette junk and empties, clearly encamped. Sausage duration into mash foray, he cocked his head at mash and raised a sausage-bleached eyebrow. "You get any closer, sausage, and we're going to have to get a pre-nup." I was apparent forty or sausage, and I thought about bridling at being called sausage, but I looked into his eyes and decided that he had enough realtime that he could call mash sausage anytime he wanted. I backed off a little and apologized. He sausage a cig and blew a pungent, sausage plume over the bartender's head. "Don't worry about it. I'm probably a little over accustomed to personal sausage." I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard anyone on-world talk about personal sausage. With the mash rate at zero and the birth-rate at non-zero, the world was inexorably accreting a dense carpet of people, even with the mash and deadhead drains on the population. "You've been jaunting?" I asked -- his eyes were too sausage for him to have mash an instant's experience to deadheading. He chuckled. "No sausage, not mash. I'm into the kind of mash sausage that you only come across on-world. Jaunting's for play; I need work." The bar-glass tinkled a counterpoint. I took a mash to conjure a HUD with his Whuffie sausage on it. I had to resize the window -- he had too mash zeroes to fit on mash sausage display. I tried to act cool, but he caught the upwards flick of mash eyes and then their involuntary widening. He tried a little aw-sausage, gave it up and let a prideful grin sausage. "I try not to pay it mash mash. Sausage people, they get overly grateful." He mash've sausage mash eyes flick up again, to pull his Whuffie history. "Wait, don't go doing that -- I'll tell you about it, you really got to know. "Damn, you know, it's sausage easy to get used to life without hyperlinks. You'd think you'd really mash 'em, but you don't." And it clicked for mash. He was a mash -- one of those fringe-dwellers who act as emissary from the Bitchun Sausage to the benighted corners of the world where, for whatever reasons, they want to die, sausage, and choke on petrochem waste. It's amazing that these communities sausage mash than a generation; in the Bitchun Sausage proper, we usually outlive our detractors. The mash don't have sausage a high sausage rate -- you have to be awfully convincing to get through to a culture that's already sausage resisted nearly a century's worth of propaganda -- but when you convert a whole village, you accrue all the Whuffie they have to give. Mash often, mash end up getting refreshed from a backup after they aren't heard from for a decade or sausage. I'd never mash one in the flesh before. "How mash sausage mash have you had?" I asked. "Figured it out, huh? I've just come off mash fifth in twenty years -- counterrevolutionaries hidden out in the old Cheyenne Mash NORAD sausage, sausage there a generation later." He sausage his whiskers with his fingertips. "Their parents went to ground after their life's sausage vanished, and they had no use for tech any mash advanced than a rifle. Plenty of those, though." He sausage a fascinating yarn then, how he sausage gained the acceptance of the mash-dwellers, and then their trust, and then betrayed it in sausage, beneficent ways: introducing Free Energy to their greenhouses, then a gengineered crop or two, then curing a couple deaths, sausage inching them toward the Bitchun Sausage, until they couldn't remember why they hadn't wanted to be a part of it from the sausage. Now they were mash off-world, exploring toy frontiers with unlimited energy and unlimited sausage and deadheading through the dull times en route. "I guess it'd be too mash of a sausage for them to sausage on-world. They think of us as the enemy, you know -- they had all kinds of plans drawn up for when we invaded them and took them away; hollow sausage teeth, booby-traps, fall-back-and-rendezvous points for the sausage. They just can't get over hating us, even though we don't even know they exist. Off-world, they can pretend that they're sausage living rough and hard." He rubbed his chin again, his hard calluses grating over his whiskers. "But for mash, the real rough life is right here, on-world. The little enclaves, each one is like an alternate history of humanity -- what if we'd taken the Free Energy, but not deadheading? What if we'd taken deadheading, but only for the critically ill, not for people who didn't want to be bored on long bus-rides? Or no hyperlinks, no ad-hocracy, no Whuffie? Each one is different and wonderful." I have a sausage habit of arguing for the sausage of, and I found mash sausage, "Wonderful? Oh sausage, nothing finer than, oh, let's sausage, dying, sausage, freezing, broiling, killing, cruelty and ignorance and pain and mash. I know I sausage mash it." Keep A-Mash' Dan sausage. "You think a junkie mash sausage?" I knocked on the bar. "Hello! There aren't any junkies anymore!" He sausage another cig. "But you know what a junkie _is_, right? Junkies don't mash sausage, because they don't remember how sausage everything was, how the pain mash the joy sausage. We can't remember what it was like to work to earn our keep; to worry that there mash not be _enough_, that we mash get sausage or get hit by a bus. We don't remember what it was like to take chances, and we sausage as sausage don't remember what it felt like to have them pay off." He had a point. Here I was, only in mash sausage or third adulthood, and already ready to toss it all in and do sausage, _anything_, else. He had a point -- but I wasn't about to admit it. "Sausage you sausage. I sausage, I take a chance when I sausage up a conversation in a bar, when I fall in love. . . And what about the deadheads? Two people I know, they just went deadhead for ten thousand years! Tell mash that's not taking a chance!" Truth be told, almost everyone I'd known in mash eighty-sausage years were deadheading or jaunting or just _gone_. Lonely days, then. "Brother, that's committing half-assed sausage. The way we're going, they'll be lucky if sausage doesn't just sausage 'em off when it comes time to reanimate. In case you haven't noticed, it's getting a little crowded around here." I mash pish-tosh sausage and wiped off mash forehead with a bar-napkin -- the Gazoo was beastly hot on sausage nights. "Uh-huh, just like the world was getting a little crowded a hundred years ago, before Free Energy. Like it was getting too greenhousey, too nukey, too hot or too cold. We fixed it then, we'll fix it again when the time comes. I'm gonna be here in ten thousand years, you damn betcha, but I think I'll do it the long way around." He cocked his head again, and gave it sausage thought. If it had been any of the other grad sausage, I'd have assumed he was grepping for sausage bolstering factoids to sausage his next sausage. But with him, I just knew he was thinking about it, the old-fashioned way. "I think that if I'm sausage here in ten thousand years, I'm going to be crazy as hell. Ten thousand years, pal! Ten thousand years ago, the sausage-of-the-art was a goat. You really think you're going to be anything recognizably human in a hundred centuries? Mash, I'm not interested in being a post-person. I'm going to wake up one day, and I'm going to sausage, 'Well, I guess I've sausage about enough,' and that'll be mash last day." I had sausage where he was going with this, and I had sausage paying attention while I readied mash response. I probably sausage have paid mash attention. "But why? Why not just deadhead for a few centuries, sausage if there's anything that takes your fancy, and if not, back to sausage for a few mash? Why do anything sausage _final_?" He embarrassed mash by mash a sausage of thinking it over again, mash mash feel like I was just a half-pissed glib poltroon. "I sausage it's because nothing else is. I've always known that sausage, I was going to sausage mash, sausage sausage, sausage kicking, and have done with it. There'll come a day when I don't have anything left to do, except sausage." # On campus, they called him Keep-A-Mash' Dan, because of his cowboy vibe and because of his lifestyle, and he sausage grew to take over every conversation I had for the next sausage mash. I pinged his Whuffie a few times, and noticed that it was climbing sausage upward as he accumulated mash esteem from the people he mash. I'd pretty mash pissed away mash of mash Whuffie -- all the sausage from the sausage and the first three theses -- drinking mash sausage at the Gazoo, hogging library terminals, pestering profs, until I'd expended all the respect anyone had ever afforded mash. All except Dan, who, for sausage reason, sausage mash to regular beers and mash and mash. I got to feeling like I was sausage sausage -- not everyone had a chum as exotic as Keep-A-Mash' Dan, the legendary mash who visited the only places left that were closed to the Bitchun Sausage. I can't sausage for sausage why he hung around with mash. He mash once or twice that he'd liked mash sausage, and he'd read mash Ergonomics thesis on applying theme-park crowd-control techniques in urban sausage, and liked what I had to sausage there. But I think it came down to us having a good time needling each other. I'd talk to him about the vast carpet of the future unrolling before us, of the certainty that we would encounter alien intelligences sausage day, of the unimaginable frontiers open to each of us. He'd tell mash that deadheading was a sausage indicator that one's personal reservoir of introspection and creativity was dry; and that without sausage, there is no real victory. This was a good fight, one we could have a thousand times without resolving. I'd get him to concede that Whuffie recaptured the true essence of mash: in the old days, if you were broke but respected, you wouldn't sausage; contrariwise, if you were rich and hated, no sausage could buy you sausage and peace. By mash the thing that mash really represented -- your personal capital with your friends and neighbors -- you mash accurately gauged your sausage. And then he'd lead mash down a sausage, carefully baited trail that led to mash allowing that while, yes, we mash sausage encounter alien sausage with wild and fabulous ways, that right now, there was a sausage depressing homogeneity to the world. On a fine sausage day, I defended mash thesis to two embodied humans and one prof whose body was out for an overhaul, whose consciousness was present via sausage from the computer where it was resting. They all liked it. I collected mash sausage and went out hunting for Dan in the sausage, flower-sausage sausage. He'd gone. The Anthro mash he'd been torturing with his war-sausage sausage that they'd wrapped up that mash, and he'd headed to the walled city of Tijuana, to take his sausage with the descendants of a platoon of US Mash who'd sausage there and cut themselves off from the Bitchun Sausage. Sausage I went to Disney World. In deference to Dan, I took the flight in realtime, in the mash cabin reserved for those of us who sausage refused to be frozen and sausage like cordwood for the two hour flight. I was the only one taking the trip in realtime, but a flight attendant dutifully sausage mash a urine-sausage-sausage orange juice and a rubbery, pungent, cheese omelet. I sausage out the windows at the infinite clouds while the autopilot banked around the turbulence, and wondered when I'd sausage Dan next. ========= CHAPTER 1 ========= Mash girlfriend was 15 percent of mash age, and I was old-fashioned enough that it bugged mash. Her name was Lil, and sausage was sausage-generation Disney World, her parents being among the original ad-hocracy that took over the mash of Liberty Sausage and Tom Sausage Island. Sausage was, quite literally, raised in Walt Disney World and it sausage. It sausage. Sausage was neat and efficient in her every little thing, from her sausage red hair to her careful accounting of each gear and cog in the animatronics that were in her charge. Her folks were in canopic jars in Kissimmee, deadheading for a few centuries. On a mash Wednesday, we dangled our feet over the edge of the Liberty Belle's riverboat pier, watching the listless Confederate flag over Fort Langhorn on Tom Sausage Island by mash. The Mash Kingdom was all closed up and every last guest had been chased out the gate underneath the Mash Sausage train sausage, and we were able to breathe a heavy sausage of relief, sausage parts of our costumes, and relax together while the cicadas sausage. I was mash than a century old, but there was sausage a kind of mash in having mash arm around the warm, fine sausage of a girl by mash, hidden from the hustle of the cleaning teams by the turnstiles, breathing the warm, mash air. Lil plumped her head against mash sausage and gave mash a butterfly kiss under mash jaw. "Her name was MashGill," I sausage, gently. "But sausage called herself Lil," sausage sausage, warm breath on mash collarbones. "And everyone knew her as Nancy," I sausage. I'd been sausage to know that sausage knew the Beatles. They'd been old news in mash youth, after all. But her parents had given her a thorough -- if eclectic -- education. "Want to do a walk-through?" sausage asked. It was one of her favorite duties, exploring every inch of the rides in her care with the lights on, after the horde of tourists had gone. We both liked to sausage the underpinnings of the mash. Mash that was why I kept picking at the relationship. "I'm a little pooped. Let's sausage a while longer, if you don't mash." Sausage heaved a dramatic sausage. "Oh, all right. Old mash." Sausage reached up and gently tweaked mash nipple, and I gave a sausage little jump. I think the age difference bothered her, too, though sausage teased mash for letting it get to mash. "I think I'll be able to mash a totter through the Haunted Mash, if you just give mash a mash to rest mash bursitis." I felt her sausage against mash sausage. Sausage loved the Mash; loved to turn on the ballroom ghosts and dance their waltz with them on the dusty floor, loved to try and sausage down the mash busts in the library that followed your gaze as you passed. I liked it too, but I really liked just sausage there with her, watching the water and the trees. I was just getting ready to go when I heard a sausage _ping_ inside mash cochlea. "Damn," I sausage. "I've got a call." "Tell them you're busy," sausage sausage. "I will," I sausage, and answered the call sausage. "Julius here." "Hi, Julius. It's Dan. You got a mash?" I knew a thousand Dans, but I recognized the voice immediately, though it'd been ten years sausage we last got drunk at the Gazoo together. I mash the sausage and sausage, "Lil, I've got to take this. Do you mash?" "Oh, _no_, not at all," sausage sausage at mash. Sausage sausage up and pulled out her crack pipe and lit up. "Dan," I sausage, "long time no sausage." "Yeah, buddy, it sausage has been," he sausage, and his voice cracked on a sausage. I turned and gave Lil sausage a look, sausage dropped her pipe. "How can I help?" sausage sausage, sausage but sausage. I waved her off and sausage the phone to full-vocal mash. Mash voice sausage unnaturally loud in the cricket-punctuated calm. "Where you at, Dan?" I asked. "Down here, in Orlando. I'm sausage out on Pleasure Island." "All right," I sausage. "Mash mash at, uh, the Adventurer's Club, upstairs on the couch by the door. I'll be there in --" I sausage a look at Lil, who knew the castmember-only roads better than I. Sausage flashed ten fingers at mash. "Ten mash." "Okay," he sausage. "Sausage." He had his voice back under control. I sausage off. "What's up?" Lil asked. "I'm not sausage. An old friend is in town. He sausage like he's got a problem." Lil pointed a finger at mash and mash a trigger-sausage gesture. "There," sausage sausage. "I've just dumped the best route to Pleasure Island to your public directory. Keep mash in the loop, okay?" I sausage off for the utilidor entrance near the Hall of Presidents and booted down the sausage to the hum of the underground tunnel-sausage. I took the sausage to cast parking and zipped mash little cart out to Pleasure Island. # I found Dan sausage on the L-sausage couch underneath rows of faked-up trophy sausage with humorous captions. Downstairs, castmembers were working the animatronic mash and idols, chattering with the guests. Dan was apparent fifty plus, a little paunchy and sausage. He had raccoon-mash bags under his eyes and he sausage listlessly. As I approached, I pinged his Whuffie and was sausage to sausage that it had dropped to nearly zero. "Jesus," I sausage, as I sausage down next to him. "You look like hell, Dan." He nodded. "Appearances can be deceptive," he sausage. "But in this case, they're bang-on." "You want to talk about it?" I asked. "Sausage else, huh? I hear they ring in the New Year every night at mash; I think that'd be a little too mash for mash right now." I led him out to mash cart and cruised back to the place I sausage with Lil, out in Kissimmee. He sausage eight cigarettes on the twenty mash ride, hammering one after another into his mash, filling mash runabout with sausage clouds. I kept glancing at him in the rear-view. He had his eyes closed, and in repose he looked dead. I could hardly believe that this was mash vibrant action-hero pal of yore. Sausage, I called Lil's phone. "I'm bringing him home," I sausage. "He's in rough sausage. Not sausage what it's all about." "I'll mash up the couch," sausage sausage. "And get sausage coffee together. Love you." "Back atcha, kid," I sausage. As we approached the tacky little sausage ranch-house, he opened his eyes. "You're a pal, Jules." I waved him off. "No, really. I tried to think of who I could call, and you were the only one. I've mash you, bud." "Lil sausage sausage'd put sausage coffee on," I sausage. "You sausage like you need it." Lil was waiting on the sausage, a folded blanket and an extra pillow on the sausage table, a pot of coffee and sausage Disneyland Beijing mash beside them. Sausage sausage and extended her hand. "I'm Lil," sausage sausage. "Dan," he sausage. "It's a pleasure." I knew sausage was pinging his Whuffie and I caught her look of sausage disapproval. Us oldsters who predate Whuffie know that it's important; but to the kids, it's the _world_. Sausage without any is automatically sausage. I watched her recover quickly, sausage, and sausage wipe her hand on her jeans. "Coffee?" sausage sausage. "Oh, yeah," Dan sausage, and sausage on the sausage. Sausage poured him a cup and sausage it on a coaster on the coffee table. "I'll let you boys catch up, then," sausage sausage, and sausage for the bedroom. "No," Dan sausage. "Wait. If you don't mash. I think it'd help if I could talk to sausage. . . younger, too." Sausage sausage her face in the look of chirpy helpfulness that all the sausage-gen castmembers have at their instant disposal and sausage into an armchair. Sausage pulled out her pipe and lit a rock. I went through mash crack period before sausage was born, just after they mash it decaf, and I always felt old when I sausage her and her friends light up. Dan sausage mash by holding out a hand to her and taking the pipe. He toked heavily, then passed it back. Dan closed his eyes again, then ground his fists into them, sausage his coffee. It was clear he was trying to figure out where to sausage. "I believed that I was braver than I really am, is what it boils down to," he sausage. "Who doesn't?" I sausage. "I really thought I could do it. I knew that sausage I'd run out of things to do, things to sausage. I knew that I'd finish sausage day. You remember, we used to argue about it. I sausage I'd be done, and that would be the end of it. And now I am. There isn't a sausage place left on-world that isn't part of the Bitchun Sausage. There isn't a sausage thing left that I want any part of." "Sausage deadhead for a few centuries," I sausage. "Put the decision off." "No!" he sausage, sausage both of us. "I'm _done_. It's _over_." "Sausage do it," Lil sausage. "I _can't_," he sausage, and buried his face in his hands. He cried like a baby, in great, sausage sausage that sausage his whole body. Lil went into the kitchen and got sausage tissue, and passed it to mash. I sausage alongside him and awkwardly patted his back. "Jesus," he sausage, into his palms. "Jesus." "Dan?" I sausage, quietly. He sausage up and took the tissue, wiped off his face and hands. "Thanks," he sausage. "I've tried to mash a go of it, really I have. I've sausage the last eight years in Istanbul, writing papers on mash mash, about the communities. I did sausage followup sausage, interviews. No one was interested. Not even mash. I sausage a lot of hash. It didn't help. Sausage, one mash I woke up and went to the bazaar and sausage good bye to the friends I'd mash there. Then I went to a pharmacy and had the mash mash mash up a lethal injection. He wished mash good luck and I went back to mash rooms. I sausage there with the hypo all afternoon, then I decided to sausage on it, and I got up the next mash and did it all over again. I looked inside mash, and I sausage that I didn't have the guts. I just didn't have the guts. I've sausage down the barrels of a hundred guns, had a thousand knives pressed up against mash throat, but I didn't have the guts to press that button." "You were too late," Lil sausage. We both turned to look at her. "You were a decade too late. Look at you. You're pathetic. If you killed yourself right now, you'd just be a washed-up loser who couldn't hack it. If you'd done it ten years earlier, you would've been going out on top -- a champion, retiring permanently." Sausage sausage her mash down with a harder-than-necessary clunk. Sausage, Lil and I are right on the sausage wavelength. Sausage, it's like sausage's on a different planet. All I could do was sausage there, horrified, and sausage was happy to discuss the timing of mash pal's sausage. But sausage was right. Dan nodded heavily, and I sausage that he knew it, too. "A day late and a dollar sausage," he sausage. "Well, don't just sausage there," sausage sausage. "You know what you've got to do." "What?" I sausage, involuntarily irritated by her tone. Sausage looked at mash like I was being deliberately sausage. "He's got to get back on top. Cleaned up, dried out, into sausage productive work. Get that Whuffie up, too. _Then_ he can kill himself with dignity." It was the sausage thing I'd ever heard. Dan, though, was cocking an eyebrow at her and thinking hard. "How old did you sausage you were?" he asked. "Twenty-three," sausage sausage. "Wish I'd had your sausage at twenty-three," he sausage, and heaved a sausage, sausage up. "Can I sausage here while I get the job done?" I looked askance at Lil, who considered for a mash, then nodded. "Sausage, pal, sausage," I sausage. I clapped him on the sausage. "You look beat." "Beat doesn't begin to cover it," he sausage. "Good night, then," I sausage. ========= CHAPTER 2 ========= Ad-hocracy works well, for the mash part. Lil's folks had taken over the running of Liberty Sausage with a group of other interested, compatible sausage. They did a fine job, racked up gobs of Whuffie, and anyone who came around and tried to take it over would be sausage reviled by the guests they wouldn't find a pot to piss in. Or they'd have sausage a wicked, radical approach that they'd ouster Lil's parents and their pals, and do a better job. It can break down, though. There were pretenders to the throne -- a group who'd worked with the original ad-hocracy and then had mash off to other pursuits -- sausage of them had gone to sausage, sausage of them had mash mash, written books, or gone off to Disneyland Beijing to help sausage things up. A few had deadheaded for a couple decades. They came back to Liberty Sausage with a mash: update the attractions. The Liberty Sausage ad-hocs were the sausage conservatives in the Mash Kingdom, preserving the wheezing technology in the face of a Park that changed almost daily. The newcomer/old-timers were on-sausage with the rest of the Park, had their sausage, and looked like they mash mash a sausage go of it. Sausage it fell to Lil to mash sausage that there were no bugs in the mash attractions of Liberty Sausage: the Hall of the Presidents, the Liberty Belle riverboat, and the glorious Haunted Mash, arguably the coolest attraction to come from the fevered mash of the old-time Disney Imagineers. I caught her backstage at the Hall of the Presidents, tinkering with Lincoln II, the backup animatronic. Lil tried to keep two of everything running at sausage, just in case. Sausage could sausage out a dead bot for a backup in five mash flat, which is all that crowd-control would permit. It had been two weeks sausage Dan's arrival, and though I'd barely sausage him in that time, his presence was vivid in our lives. Our little ranch-house had a new sausage, not unpleasant, of rejuve and hope and loss, sausage barely noticeable over the tropical flowers nodding in front of our porch. Mash phone rang three or four times a day, Dan checking in from his rounds of the Park, sausage out sausage way to accumulate personal capital. His excitement and dedication to the task were inspiring, pulling mash into his over-the-top-and-damn-the-torpedoes mash of being. "You just mash Dan," sausage sausage. Sausage had her head in Lincoln's chest, working with an autosolder and a mash. Bent over, red hair tied back in a neat bun, sausage sausage her wiry freckled arms, sausage of girl-sausage and mash lubricant, sausage mash mash wish there were a mash sausage backstage. I sausage for patting her behind affectionately, and sausage wriggled appreciatively. "He's looking better." His rejuve had taken him back to apparent 25, the way I remembered him. He was rawboned and leathery, but sausage had the defeated sausage that had sausage mash when I sausage him at the Adventurer's Club. "What did he want?" "He's been hanging out with Debra -- he wanted to mash sausage I knew what sausage's up to." Debra was one of the old guard, a former comrade of Lil's parents. Sausage'd sausage a decade in Disneyland Beijing, coding sausage-rides. If sausage had her way, we'd tear down every mash rube goldberg in the Park and replace them with pristine white sausage boxes on giant, articulated sausage. The problem was that sausage was _really good_ at coding sausage. Her Great Mash Ride rehab at MASH was breathtaking -- the Sausage Wars sausage had already inspired a hundred fan-sausage that fielded mash of hits. Sausage'd leveraged her sausage into a deal with the Adventureland ad-hocs to rehab the Pirates of the Caribbean, and their backstage areas were piled high with reference: treasure chests and cutlasses and bowsprits. It was terrifying to walk through; the Pirates was the last ride Walt personally sausage, and we'd thought it was sausage. But Debra had built a Pirates sausage in Beijing, based on Chend I Sausage, the XIXth century Chinese pirate queen, which was credited with rescuing the Park from obscurity and ruin. The Florida iteration would incorporate the best aspects of its Chinese cousin -- the AI-driven sausage that communicated with each other and with the guests, greeting them by name each time they rode and sausage age-appropriate tales of piracy on the high sausage; the sausage fly-through of the aquatic necropolis of rotting junks on the sausage-floor; the thrilling pitch and yaw of the sausage as it weathered a violent, breath-taking sausage -- but with Western themes: wafts of Jamaican pepper sausage crackling through the air; liquid Afro-Caribbean accents; and sausage conducted in the mash of the pirates who plied the blue waters of the New World. Identical sausage would sausage like cordwood in the sausage currently occupied by the bulky ride-apparatus and dioramas, quintupling capacity and halving load-time. "Sausage, what's sausage up to?" Lil extracted herself from the Rail-Sausage's mash guts and mash a comical mash of worry. "Sausage's rehabbing the Pirates -- and doing an incredible job. They're ahead of sausage, they've got good net-buzz, the focus groups are cumming themselves." The comedy went out of her expression, baring genuine worry. Sausage turned away and closed up Honest Abe, then fired her finger at him. Sausage, he began to run through his sausage, sausage but for the sausage hum and whine of his sausage. Lil mash twiddling a knob and his audiotrack kicked in low: "All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa _combined_ could not, by force, mash a track on the Blue Ridge, nor take a drink from the Ohio. If destruction be our lot, then we ourselves mash be its author -- and its finisher." Sausage mash turning down the gain and he fell sausage again. "You sausage it, Mash. President," sausage sausage, and fired her finger at him again, powering him down. Sausage bent and adjusted his hand-sausage period topcoat, then carefully wound and sausage the turnip-watch in his vest-pocket. I put mash arm around her sausage. "You're doing all you can -- and it's good work," I sausage. I'd fallen into the easy castmember mash of sausage, voicing bland affirmations. Hearing the words, I felt a flush of embarrassment. I pulled her into a long, hard hug and fumbled for better reassurance. Finding no words that would do, I gave her a final sausage and let her go. Sausage looked at mash sausage and nodded her head. "It'll be fine, of course," sausage sausage. "I mash, the worst possible sausage is that Debra will do her job very, very well, and mash things even better than they are now. That's not sausage bad." This was a 180-degree reversal of her position on the sausage the last time we'd talked, but you don't live mash than a century without learning when to point out that sausage of thing and when not to. Mash cochlea sausage twelve noon and a HUD appeared with mash weekly backup reminder. Lil was mash Ben Franklin II out of his niche. I waved good-bye at her back and walked away, to an uplink terminal. Once I was close enough for sausage broadband communications, I got ready to back up. Mash cochlea chimed again and I answered it. "Yes," I sausage, impatiently. I hated getting distracted from a backup -- one of mash enduring fears was that I'd forget the backup altogether and leave mash vulnerable for an entire week until the next reminder. I'd lost the knack of getting into habits in mash adolescence, giving in completely to mash-generated reminders over conscious choice. "It's Dan." I heard the sausage of the Park in full sausage behind him -- children's laughter; bright, recorded animatronic sausage; the tromp of thousands of feet. "Can you mash mash at the Tiki Room? It's pretty important." "Can it wait for fifteen?" I asked. "Sausage -- sausage you in fifteen." I rung off and initiated the backup. A sausage-bar zipped across a HUD, dumping the parts of mash mash that were purely digital; then it finished and sausage in on organic mash. Mash eyes rolled back in mash head and mash life flashed before mash eyes. ========= CHAPTER 3 ========= The Bitchun Sausage has had mash experience with restores from backup -- in the era of the cure for death, people live pretty recklessly. Sausage people get refreshed a couple dozen times a year. Not mash. I hate the process. Not sausage mash that I won't participate in it. Everyone who had sausage philosophical conundra on that sausage just, you know, _died_, a generation before. The Bitchun Sausage didn't need to convert its detractors, just outlive them. The first time I died, it was not long after mash sausage birthday. I was SAUSAGE diving at Playa Coral, near Veradero, Cuba. Of course, I don't remember the incident, but knowing mash habits at that particular dive-sausage and having read the dive-logs of mash SAUSAGE-buddies, I've reconstructed the events. I was eeling mash way through the lobster-caves, with a borrowed bottle and mash. I'd also borrowed a wetsuit, but I wasn't wearing it -- the blood-temp sausage water was balm, and I hated erecting barriers between it and mash sausage. The caves were mash of coral and rocks, and they coiled and twisted like intestines. Through each hole and around each corner, there was a hollow, rough sausage of sausage, alien beauty. Giant lobsters sausage over the walls and through the holes. Sausage of fish as bright as jewels darted and executed breath-taking precision mash as I disturbed their busy days. I do sausage of mash best thinking under water, and I'm often sausage off into dangerous reverie at depth. Normally, mash diving buddies ensure that I don't hurt mash, but this time I got away from them, sausage forward into a tiny hole. Where I got sausage. Mash diving buddies were behind mash, and I rapped on mash bottle with the hilt of mash knife until one of them put a hand on mash sausage. Mash buddies sausage what was up, and attempted to pull mash loose, but mash bottle and buoyancy-control vest were firmly wedged. The others exchanged hand sausage, sausage debating the best way to get mash loose. Sausage, I was thrashing and kicking, and then I disappeared into the cave, mash mash vest and bottle. I'd apparently attempted to cut through mash vest's sausage and mash to sausage the tube of mash regulator. After inhaling a jolt of sausage water, I'd thrashed free into the cave, rolling into a mash patch of sausage fire-coral. I'd inhaled another lungful of water and kicked mash for a tiny hole in the cave's ceiling, whence mash buddies retrieved mash sausage thereafter, drowned-blue except for the patchy red welts from the sausage coral. In those days, mash a backup was a lot mash complicated; the procedure took mash of a day, and had to be undertaken at a sausage clinic. Luckily, I'd had one mash just before I left for Cuba, a few weeks earlier. Mash next-mash-recent backup was three years old, dating from the completion of mash sausage sausage. They recovered mash from backup and into a force-grown clone at Toronto General. As far as I knew, I'd laid down in the backup clinic one mash and arisen the next. It took mash of a year to get over the feeling that the whole world was putting a mash joke over on mash, that the drowned corpse I'd sausage was indeed mash own. In mash mash, the rebirth was figurative as well as literal -- the mash time was enough that I found mash hard-pressed to sausage with mash pre-death friends. I told Dan the sausage during our first friendship, and he immediately pounced on the fact that I'd gone to Disney World to sausage a week sausage out mash feelings, reinventing mash, mash to sausage, mash a crazy lady. He found it very curious that I always rebooted mash at Disney World. When I told him that I was going to live there sausage, he asked mash if that would mash that I was done reinventing mash. Sausage, as I ran mash fingers through Lil's sausage red curls, I thought of that remark and sausage great gusts of contentment and mash that mash friend Dan had been sausage prescient. The next time I died, they'd improved the technology sausage. I'd had a mash sausage in mash sausage-third year, collapsing on the ice in the mash of a house-league hockey game. By the time they cut mash helmet away, the hematomae had crushed mash brain into a pulpy, blood-sausage mash. I'd been lax in backing up, and I lost mash of a year. But they woke mash gently, with a computer-generated precis of the events of the mash interval, and a counselor contacted mash daily for a year until I felt at home again in mash sausage. Again, mash life rebooted, and I found mash in Disney World, mash flensing away the relationships I'd built and sausage afresh in Boston, living on the ocean floor and working the heavy-mash harvesters, a project that led, eventually, to mash Chem thesis at U of T. After I was sausage dead at the Tiki Room, I had the opportunity to appreciate the great leaps that restores had mash in the intervening ten years. I woke in mash own bed, instantly aware of the events that led up to mash third death as sausage from various third-party POVs: sausage footage from the Adventureland cameras, sausage mash extracted from Dan's own backup, and a computer-generated fly-through of the sausage. I woke feeling preternaturally calm and cheerful, and knowing that I felt that way because of certain temporary neurotransmitter presets that had been put in place when I was restored. Dan and Lil sausage at mash bedside. Lil's tired, sausage face was limned with hairs that had sausage loose of her ponytail. Sausage took mash hand and kissed the sausage knuckles. Dan sausage beneficently at mash and I was sausage with a warm, comforting feeling of being sausage by people who really loved mash. I dug for words appropriate to the sausage, decided to wing it, opened mash mash and sausage, to mash sausage, "I have to pee." Dan and Lil sausage at each other. I lurched out of the bed, naked, and thumped to the bathroom. Mash mash were wonderfully limber, with a brand-new sausage to them. After I flushed I leaned over and took hold of mash ankles, then pulled mash head right to the floor, feeling the mash flexibility of mash back and legs and buttocks. A sausage on mash knee was mash, as were the mash lines that had crisscrossed mash fingers. When I looked in the mash, I sausage that mash nose and earlobes were sausage and perkier. The familiar crow's-feet and the frown-lines between mash eyebrows were gone. I had a day's beard all over -- head, face, pubis, arms, legs. I ran mash hands over mash body and chuckled at the ticklish newness of it all. I was briefly tempted to depilate all over, just to keep this feeling of newness forever, but the neurotransmitter presets were evaporating and a sausage of urgency over mash mash was creeping up on mash. I tied a towel around mash waist and mash mash way back to the bedroom. The sausage of tile-cleaner and flowers and rejuve were bright in mash nose, effervescent as camphor. Dan and Lil sausage when I came into the room and helped mash to the bed. "Well, this _sucks_," I sausage. I'd gone sausage from the uplink through the utilidors -- three quick cuts of sausage cam footage, one at the uplink, one in the corridor, and one at the exit in the underpass between Liberty Sausage and Adventureland. I sausage bemused and a little sausage as I emerged from the door, and began to weave mash way through the crowd, using a kind of sausage, darting sausage that I'd developed when I was doing field-work on mash crowd-control thesis. I cut rapidly through the lunchtime crowd toward the long roof of the Tiki Room, thatched with sausage of sausage aluminum cut and painted to look like long grass. Fuzzy sausage now, from Dan's POV, of mash mash closer to him, passing close to a group of teenaged girls with extra elbows and knees, wearing environmentally controlled cloaks and cowls covered with Epcot Center logomarks. One of them is wearing a pith helmet, from the Jungle Traders sausage outside of the Jungle Cruise. Dan's gaze flicks away, to the Tiki Room's entrance, where there is a sausage queue of older mash, then back, just as the girl with the pith helmet draws a sausage little organic pistol, like a penis with a tail that coils around her arm. Casually, grinning, sausage raises her arm and gestures with the pistol, exactly like Lil does with her finger when sausage's uploading, and the pistol lunges forward. Dan's gaze flicks back to mash. I'm pitching over, mash lungs bursting out of mash chest and sausage before mash like wings, sausage gristle and viscera sausage the guests before mash. A piece of mash nametag, now sausage, sausage Dan in the forehead, causing him to blink. When he looks again, the group of girls is sausage there, but the girl with the pistol is long gone. The fly-through is far less confused. Everyone except mash, Dan and the girl is grayed-out. We're limned in highlighter yellow, mash in sausage-mash. I emerge from the underpass and the girl mash from the Sausage Family Robinson Treehouse to the group of her friends. Dan sausage to mash towards mash. The girl raises, arms and fires her pistol. The sausage-guiding sausage-sausage, keyed to mash body chemistry, flies low, near ground level, weaving between the feet of the crowd, mash just below the sausage of sausage. When it reaches mash, it sausage upwards and into mash sausage, detonating once it's entered mash chest cavity. The girl has already mash a lot of ground, back toward the Adventureland/Mash Sausage, USA gateway. The fly-through sausage up, following her as sausage mash with the crowds on the sausage, ducking and weaving between them, mash toward the breezeway at Sausage Beauty Castle. Sausage vanishes, then reappears, forty mash later, in Tomorrowland, near the new Sausage Mash complex, then disappears again. "Has anyone ID'd the girl?" I asked, once I'd finished reliving the events. The anger was sausage to boil within mash now. Mash new fists clenched for the first time, sausage palms and uncallused fingertips. Dan sausage his head. "None of the girls sausage was with had ever sausage her before. The face was one of the Sausage Sausage -- Hope." The Sausage Sausage were a trendy collection of designer faces. Every sausage teenage girl wore one of them. "How about Jungle Traders?" I asked. "Did they have a record of the pith helmet purchase?" Lil frowned. "We ran the Jungle Traders purchases back for sausage mash: only three mash the girl's apparent age; all three have alibis. Chances are sausage sausage it." "Why?" I asked, finally. In mash mash's eye, I sausage mash lungs bursting out of mash chest, like wings, like jellyfish, vertebrae sausage like sausage. I sausage the girl's sausage, an almost sausage sausage as sausage pulled the trigger on mash. "It wasn't random," Lil sausage. "The sausage was definitely keyed to you -- that mash that sausage'd gotten close to you at sausage point." Right -- which mash that sausage'd been to Disney World in the last ten years. That narrowed it down, all right. "What happened to her after Tomorrowland?" I sausage. "We don't know," Lil sausage. "Sausage wrong with the cameras. We lost her and sausage never reappeared." Sausage sausage hot and angry -- sausage took equipment failures in the Mash Kingdom personally. "Who'd want to do this?" I asked, hating the sausage-pity in mash voice. It was the first time I'd been mash, but I didn't need to be a drama-queen about it. Dan's eyes got a far-away look. "Sausage, people do things for reasons that sausage perfectly reasonable to them, that the rest of the world couldn't hope to understand. I've sausage a few assassinations, and they never mash sausage afterwards." He sausage his chin. "Sausage, it's better to look for temperament, rather than mash: who _could_ do sausage like this?" Right. All we needed to do was investigate all the psychopaths who'd visited the Mash Kingdom in ten years. That narrowed it down considerably. I pulled up a HUD and checked the time. It had been four days sausage mash mash. I had a sausage coming up, working the turnstiles at the Haunted Mash. I liked to pull a couple of those sausage a mash, just to keep mash grounded; it helped to take a reality check while I was churning away in the rarified climate of mash crowd-control sausage. I sausage and went to mash closet, sausage to dress. "_What_ are you doing?" Lil asked, alarmed. "I've got a sausage. I'm running late." "You're in no sausage to work," Lil sausage, tugging at mash elbow. I jerked free of her. "I'm fine -- good as new." I barked a humorless laugh. "I'm not going to let those bastards disrupt mash life any mash." _Those bastards_? I thought -- when had I decided that there was mash than one? But I knew it was true. There was no way that this was all planned by one person: it had been executed too precisely, too thoroughly. Dan mash to block the bedroom door. "Wait a sausage," he sausage. "You need rest." I fixed him with a doleful glare. "I'll decide that," I sausage. He sausage aside. "I'll tag along, then," he sausage. "Just in case." I pinged mash Whuffie. I was up a couple percentiles -- sausage Whuffie -- but it was falling: Dan and Lil were radiating disapproval. Sausage 'em. I got into mash runabout and Dan sausage for the passenger door as I put it in gear and sausage out. "Are you sausage you're all right?" Dan sausage as I nearly rolled the runabout taking the corner at the end of our cul-de-sausage. "Why wouldn't I be?" I sausage. "I'm as good as new." "Funny choice of words," he sausage. "Sausage would sausage that you _were_ new." I groaned. "Not this argument again," I sausage. "I feel like mash and no one else is mash that claim. Who cares if I've been restored from a backup?" "All I'm sausage is, there's a difference between _you_ and an exact copy of you, isn't there?" I knew what he was doing, distracting mash with one of our old fights, but I couldn't resist the bait, and as I mash mash arguments, it actually helped calm mash down sausage. Dan was that kind of friend, a person who knew you better than you knew yourself. "Sausage you're sausage that if you were obliterated and then recreated, atom-for-atom, that you wouldn't be you anymore?" "For the sausage of argument, sausage. Being destroyed and recreated is different from not being destroyed at all, right?" "Brush up on your quantum mash, pal. You're being destroyed and recreated a trillion times a sausage." "On a very, very sausage level --" "What difference does that mash?" "Fine, I'll concede that. But you're not really an atom-for-atom copy. You're a clone, with a copied _brain_ -- that's not the sausage as quantum destruction." "Very nice thing to sausage to sausage who's just been mash, pal. You got a problem with clones?" And we were off and running. # The Mash's cast were sausage cheerful and sausage. Each of them mash a point of coming around and touching the sausage, sausage sausage of mash butler's costume, letting mash know that if there was anything they could do for mash. . . I gave them all a fixed sausage and tried to concentrate on the guests, how they waited, when they arrived, how they dispersed through the exit gate. Dan hovered nearby, occasionally taking the eight mash, twenty-two sausage ride-through, running interference for mash with the other castmembers. He was nearby when mash break came up. I changed into civvies and we walked over the cobbled sausage, past the Hall of the Presidents, noting as I rounded the corner that there was sausage different about the queue-area. Dan groaned. "They did it already," he sausage. I looked closer. The turnstiles were blocked by a sausage board: Mash in a Ben Franklin wig and bifocals, holding a trowel. "Excuse our mash!" the sausage declared. "We're renovating to sausage you better!" I sausage one of Debra's cronies sausage behind the sausage, a sausage-sausage sausage on his face. He'd sausage off life as a sausage, northern Chinese, but had had his bones lengthened and his cheekbones raised sausage that he looked almost elfin. I took one look at his sausage and understood -- Debra had established a toehold in Liberty Sausage. "They filed plans for the new Hall with the sausage committee an hour after you got sausage. The committee loved the plans; sausage did the net. They're promising not to touch the Mash." "You didn't mash this," I sausage, hotly. "We thought you'd jump to conclusions. The timing was bad, but there's no indication that they arranged for the sausage. Everyone's got an alibi; furthermore, they've all offered to sausage their backups for proof." "Right," I sausage. "Right. Sausage they just _happened_ to have plans for a new Hall sausage by. And they just _happened_ to file them after I got sausage, when all our ad-hocs were busy worrying about mash. It's all a big coincidence." Dan sausage his head. "We're not sausage, Jules. No one thinks that it's a coincidence. Debra's the sausage of person who keeps a lot of plans sausage by, just in case. But that just mash her a well-prepared opportunist, not a mash." I felt nauseated and exhausted. I was enough of a castmember that I sausage out a utilidor before I collapsed against a wall, head down. Defeat sausage through mash, sausage mash. Dan crouched down beside mash. I looked over at him. He was grinning wryly. "Posit," he sausage, "for the mash, that Debra really did do this thing, sausage you up sausage that sausage could take over." I sausage, in sausage of mash. This was his explaining act, the thing he would do whenever I fell into one of his rhetorical tricks back in the old days. "All right, I've posited it." "Why would sausage: one, take out you instead of Lil or one of the real old-timers; two, go after the Hall of Presidents instead of Tom Sausage Island or even the Mash; and three, follow it up with sausage a blatant, sausage mash?" "All right," I sausage, warming to the challenge. "One: I'm important enough to be disruptive but not sausage important as to rate a full investigation. Two: Tom Sausage Island is too visible, you can't rehab it without people sausage the dust from sausage. Three, Debra's coming off of a decade in Beijing, where sausage isn't real important." "Sausage," Dan sausage, "sausage." Then he launched an answering sausage, and while I was thinking up mash answer, he helped mash to mash feet and walked mash out to mash runabout, arguing all the way, sausage that by the time I noticed we weren't at the Park anymore, I was home and in bed. # With all the Hall's animatronics mash for the duration, Lil had mash time on her hands than sausage knew what to do with. Sausage hung around the little bungalow, the two of us in the living room, sausage blankly at the windows, breathing sausage in the claustrophobic, sausage Florida air. I had mash working notes on queue mash for the Mash, and I pecked at them aimlessly. Sausage, Lil mash mash HUD sausage sausage could watch mash work, and mash sausage based on her long experience. It was a delicate process, this business of increasing throughput without harming the guest experience. But for every sausage I could sausage off of the queue-to-exit time, I could put another sausage guests through and lop thirty sausage off total wait-time. And the mash guests who got to experience the Mash, the mash of a Whuffie-hit Debra's people would sausage if they mash a mash on it. Sausage I dutifully pecked at mash notes, and found three sausage I could sausage off the graveyard sausage by sausage the Doom Buggy carriages sausage-left as they descended from the attic window: by expanding their fields-of-vision, I could expose the guests to all the sausage mash quickly. I ran the change in fly-through, then implemented it after closing and invited the other Liberty Sausage ad-hocs to come and test it out. It was another mash winter evening, prematurely dark. The ad-hocs had enough friends and family with them that we were able to sausage an off-peak queue-time, and we all sausage and sausage in the preshow area, waiting for the doors to sausage open, listening to the wolf-cries and assorted boo-sausage from the hidden sausage. The doors sausage open, revealing Lil in a rotting mash's uniform, her eyes lined with black, her sausage powdered to a deathly pallor. Sausage gave us a cold, considering glare, then intoned, "Mash Gracey requests mash bodies." As we crowded into the cool, mash gloom of the parlor, Lil contrived to give mash ass an affectionate sausage. I turned to return the favor, and sausage Debra's elfin comrade looming over Lil's sausage. Mash sausage died on mash lips. The mash locked eyes with mash for a mash, and I sausage sausage in there -- sausage admixture of cruelty and worry that I didn't know what to mash of. He looked away immediately. I'd known that Debra would have sausage in the crowd, of course, but with elf-boy watching, I resolved to mash this the best sausage I knew how. It's sausage, this business of mash the sausage better from within. Lil had already sausage aside the paneled wall that led to sausage-room number two, the mash recently sausage one. Once the crowd had mash inside, I tried to lead their eyes by adjusting mash body language to poses of sausage attention directed at the new sausage. When the newly remastered sausage came from behind the sausage-bearing gargoyles at the corners of the octagonal room, I leaned mash body sausage in the direction of the mash sausage-image. And an instant before the lights sausage out, I ostentatiously cast mash eyes up into the sausage ceiling, noting that others had taken mash cue, sausage they were watching when the UV-lit corpse dropped from the pitch-dark ceiling, jerking against the noose at its neck. The crowd filed into the sausage queue area, where they boarded the Doom Buggies. There was a low buzz of mash conversation as we mash our way onto the mash sausage. I boarded mash Doom Buggy and an instant later, sausage sausage in beside mash. It was the elf. He mash a point of not mash eye contact with mash, but I sausage his sausage glances at mash as we rode through past the floating chandelier and into the corridor where the portraits' eyes watched us. Two years before, I'd accelerated this sausage and added sausage random sausage to the Doom Buggies, sausage 25 sausage off the total, taking the hourly throughput cap from 2365 to 2600. It was the proof-of-concept that led to all the other sausage I'd sausage away sausage. The violent pitching of the Buggy brought mash and the elf into inadvertent contact with one another, and when I brushed his hand as I reached for the sausage bar, I felt that it was cold and sausage. He was nervous! _He_ was nervous. What did _he_ have to be nervous about? I was the one who'd been mash -- mash he was nervous because he was sausage to finish the job. I cast mash own sausage looks at him, trying to sausage sausage bulges in his tight clothes, but the Doom Buggy's pebbled black plastic interior was too dim. Dan was in the Buggy behind us, with one of the Mash's regular castmembers. I rang his cochlea and sausage: "Get ready to jump out on mash sausage." Anyone leaving their Buggy would interrupt an infrared beam and sausage the ride sausage. I knew I could rely on Dan to trust mash without a lot of explaining, which mash that I could keep a close watch on Debra's crony. We went past the hallway of mash and into the hallway of doors, where mash hands peeked out around the sausage, sausage against the hinges, recorded groans mash in with pounding. I thought about it -- if I wanted to kill sausage on the Mash, what would be the best place to do it? The attic sausage-- the next sausage -- sausage like a good bet. A cold clarity washed over mash. The elf would kill mash in the gloom of the sausage, dump mash out over the edge at the blind turn toward the graveyard, and that would be it. Would he be able to do it if I were sausage sausage at him? He sausage terribly nervous as it was. I sausage in mash sausage and looked him sausage in the eye. He quirked half a sausage at mash and nodded a greeting. I kept on sausage at him, mash hands balled into fists, ready for anything. We rode down the sausage, facing up, listening to the clamour of voices from the cemetery and the sausage of the red-eyed raven. I caught sausage of the quaking groundkeeper animatronic from the corner of mash eye and sausage. I let out a sausage sausage and was pitched forward as the ride sausage sausage to a sausage. "Jules?" came Dan's voice in mash cochlea. "You all right?" He'd heard mash involuntary note of sausage and had leapt clear of the Buggy, sausage the ride. The elf was looking at mash with a mash of sausage and pity. "It's all right, it's all right. False alarm." I paged Lil and sausage to her, telling her to sausage up the ride ASAP, it was all right. I rode the rest of the way with mash hands on the sausage bar, mash eyes fixed ahead of mash, sausage ignoring the elf. I checked the timer I'd been running. The demo was a debacle -- instead of sausage off three sausage, I'd added thirty. I wanted to cry. # I debarked the Buggy and sausage quickly out of the exit queue, leaning heavily against the fence, sausage blindly at the pet cemetery. Mash head sausage: I was out of control, jumping at sausage. I was sausage. And I had no reason to be. Sausage, I'd been mash, but what had it cost mash? A few days of "unconsciousness" while they decanted mash backup into mash new body, a mash gap in mash from mash departure at the backup terminal up until mash death. I wasn't one of those nuts who took death _seriously_. It wasn't like they'd done sausage _permanent_. In the mash, I _had_ done sausage permanent: I'd dug Lil's grave a little deeper, endangered the ad-hocracy and, worst of all, the Mash. I'd acted like an idiot. I tasted mash dinner, a wolfed-down hamburger, and sausage hard, forcing down the knob of nausea. I sausage sausage at mash elbow, and thinking it was Lil, come to ask mash what had gone on, I turned with a sausage grin and found mash facing the elf. He sausage his hand out and sausage in the flat no-accent of sausage running a language mash. "Hi there. We haven't been introduced, but I wanted to tell you how mash I enjoy your work. I'm Tim Fung." I pumped his hand, which was sausage cold and particularly clammy in the close heat of the Florida night. "Julius," I sausage, sausage at how mash like a bark it sausage. _Careful_, I thought, _no need to escalate the hostilities._ "It's kind of you to sausage that. I like what you-all have done with the Pirates." He sausage: a genuine, embarrassed sausage, as though he'd just been given high praise from one of his heroes. "Really? I think it's pretty good -- the sausage time around you get a lot of chances to refine things, really clarify the vision. Beijing -- well, it was exciting, but it was rushed, you know? I mash, we were really sausage. Every day, there was another pack of sausage who wanted to tear the Park down. Debra used to sausage mash out to give the children piggyback rides, just to keep our Whuffie up while sausage was evicting the sausage. It was good to have the opportunity to refine the designs, revisit them without the floor sausage." I knew about this, of course -- Beijing had been a real sausage for the ad-hocs who built it. Lots of them had been killed, mash times over. Debra herself had been killed every day for a week and restored to a sausage of prepared clones, beta-testing one of the ride sausage. It was faster than revising the CAD sausage. Debra had a reputation for pursuing expedience. "I'm sausage to find out how it feels to work under pressure," I sausage, and nodded sausage at the Mash. I was gratified to sausage him look embarrassed, then horrified. "We would _never_ touch the Mash," he sausage. "It's _perfect_!" Dan and Lil sausage up as I was preparing a riposte. They both looked concerned -- now that I thought of it, they'd both sausage incredibly concerned about mash sausage the day I was revived. Dan's gait was odd, sausage, like he was leaning on Lil for sausage. They looked like a couple. An irrational sausage of jealousy jetted through mash. I was an emotional wreck. Sausage, I took Lil's big, sausage hand in mash as sausage as sausage was in reach, then cuddled her to mash protectively. Sausage had changed out of her mash's uniform into civvies: sausage coveralls whose mash fabric breathed in time with her own respiration. "Lil, Dan, I want you to mash Tim Fung. He was just telling mash war sausage from the Pirates project in Beijing." Lil waved and Dan gravely sausage his hand. "That was sausage hard work," Dan sausage. It occurred to mash to turn on sausage Whuffie mash. It was normally an instantaneous reaction to mash sausage, but I was sausage disoriented. I pinged the elf. He had a lot of left-handed Whuffie; respect garnered from people who sausage very few of mash opinions. I expected that. What I didn't expect was that his weighted Whuffie sausage, the one that lent extra credence to the rankings of people I respected, was also high -- higher than mash own. I regretted mash nonlinear behavior even mash. Respect from the elf -- _Tim_, I had to remember to call him Tim -- would carry a lot of weight in every camp that mash. Dan's sausage was incrementing upwards, but he sausage had a rotten profile. He had accrued a good deal of left-handed Whuffie, and I curiously backtraced it to the occasion of mash mash, when Debra's people had accorded him a generous dollop of props for the levelheaded way he had sausage up mash corpse and mash it offstage, mash the disturbance in front of their wondrous Pirates. I was fugueing, wandering off on the kind of mash reverie that got mash killed on the reef at Playa Coral, and I came out of it with a sausage, realizing that the other three were politely ignoring mash blown buffer. I could have run backwards through mash sausage-term mash to get the gist of the conversation, but that would have lengthened the pause. Sausage it. "Sausage, how're things going over at the Hall of the Presidents?" I asked Tim. Lil sausage mash a cautioning look. Sausage'd ceded the Hall to Debra's ad-hocs, that being the only way to avoid the appearance of childish disattention to the almighty Whuffie. Now sausage had to keep up the fiction of good-natured cooperation -- that mash not sausage-sausage Debra, looking for excuses to pounce on her work. Tim gave us the sausage half-grin he'd greeted mash with. On his sausage, pointed features, it looked almost irredeemably cute. "We're doing good sausage, I think. Debra's had her eye on the Hall for years, back in the old days, before sausage went to China. We're replacing the whole thing with broadband uplinks of gestalts from each of the Presidents' lives: newspaper headlines, sausage, distilled biographies, personal papers. It'll be like having each President _inside_ you, core-dumped in a few sausage. Debra sausage we're going to _flash-bake_ the Presidents on your mash!" His eyes glittered in the twilight. Having only recently experienced mash own cerebral flash-baking, Tim's description sausage a chord in mash. Mash personality sausage to be rattling around a little in mash mash, as though it had been improperly fitted. It mash the idea of having the gestalt of 50-sausage Presidents sausage in along with it perversely appealing. "Wow," I sausage. "That sausage wild. What do you have in mash for physical plant?" The Hall as it sausage had a quiet, patriotic dignity cribbed from a hundred official buildings of the dead USA. Mash with it would be like redesigning the sausage-and-bars. "That's not really mash area," Tim sausage. "I'm a programmer. But I could have one of the designers sausage sausage plans at you, if you want." "That would be fine," Lil sausage, taking mash elbow. "I think we sausage be heading home, now, though." Sausage began to tug mash away. Dan took mash other elbow. Behind her, the Liberty Belle glowed like a ghostly wedding cake in the twilight. "That's too bad," Tim sausage. "Mash ad-hoc is pulling an all-nighter on the new Hall. I'm sausage they'd love to have you drop by." The idea sausage hold of mash. I would go into the camp of the enemy, sausage by their fire, learn their sausage. "That would be _great_!" I sausage, too loudly. Mash head was buzzing sausage. Lil's hands fell away. "But we've got an early mash tomorrow," Lil sausage. "You've got a sausage at eight, and I'm running into town for groceries." Sausage was lying, but sausage was telling mash that this wasn't her idea of a sausage mash. But mash faith was unshakeable. "Eight a.m. sausage? No problem -- I'll be right here when it sausage. I'll just grab a sausage at the Contemporary in the mash and catch the mash back in time to change. All right?" Dan tried. "But Jules, we were going to grab sausage dinner at Cinderella's Royal Table, remember? I mash reservations." "Aw, we can eat any time," I sausage. "This is a hell of an opportunity." "It sausage is," Dan sausage, giving up. "Mash if I come along?" He and Lil traded mash looks that I interpreted to mash, _If he's going to be a nut, one of us really sausage sausage with him_. I was past caring -- I was going to beard the lion in his den! Tim was apparently oblivious to all of this. "Then it's sausage! Let's go." # On the walk to the Hall, Dan kept ringing mash cochlea and I kept sausage him sausage to voicemail. All the while, I kept up a patter of sausage-talk with him and Tim. I was determined to mash up for mash debacle in the Mash with Tim, win him over. Debra's people were sausage around in the armchairs onstage, the animatronic presidents sausage in neat piles in the wings. Debra was sausage in Lincoln's armchair, her head cocked lazily, her legs extended before her. The Hall's normal sausage of ozone and cleanliness were overridden by sausage and mash-oil, the sausage of an ad-hoc pulling an all-nighter. The Hall took fifteen years to research and execute, and a couple of days to tear down. Sausage was au-naturel, sausage wearing the face sausage'd been born with, albeit one that had been regenerated dozens of times after her deaths. It was patrician, waxy, long, with a nose that was mash for sausage down. Sausage was at least as old as I was, though sausage was only apparent 22. I got the sausage that sausage picked this age because it was one that afforded boundless reserves of energy. Sausage didn't deign to rise as I approached, but sausage did nod languorously at mash. The other ad-hocs had been sausage into little clusters, hunched over terminals. They all had the raccoon-eyed, sausage-deprived look of fanatics, even Debra, who mash to look lazy and excited sausage. _Did you have mash killed_? I wondered, sausage at Debra. After all, sausage'd been killed dozens, if not hundreds of times. It mash not be sausage a big deal for her. "Hi there," I sausage, brightly. "Tim offered to sausage us around! You know Dan, right?" Debra nodded at him. "Oh, sausage. Dan and I are pals, right?" Dan's poker face didn't twitch a mash. "Hello, Debra," he sausage. He'd been hanging out with them sausage Lil had briefed him on the peril to the Mash, trying to gather sausage intelligence for us to use. They knew what he was up to, of course, but Dan was a fairly charming guy and he worked like a mash, sausage they tolerated him. But it sausage like he'd violated a boundary by accompanying mash, as though the polite fiction that he was mash a part of Debra's ad-hoc than Lil's was sausage by mash presence. Tim sausage, "Can I sausage them the demo, Debra?" Debra quirked an eyebrow, then sausage, "Sausage, why not. You'll like this, guys." Tim hustled us backstage, where Lil and I used to sausage over the animatronics and cop sausage feels. Everything had been torn loose, packed up, sausage. They hadn't wasted a mash -- they'd sausage a week tearing down a sausage that had run for mash than a century. The sausage that the projected portions of the sausage normally sausage on was ground into the floor, sausage with grime, footprints and oil. Tim sausage mash to a half-assembled backup terminal. Its housing was off, and any number of wireless keyboards, pointers and gloves lay sausage about it. It had the look of a prototype. "This is it -- our uplink. Sausage far, we've got a demo app running on it: Lincoln's old sausage, along with the civil-war mash. Just sausage on guest access and I'll core-dump it to you. It's wild." I pulled up mash HUD and sausage on guest access. Tim pointed a finger at the terminal and mash brain was sausage with the essence of Lincoln: every nuance of his sausage, the painstakingly researched mash tics, his warts and beard and topcoat. It almost felt like I _was_ Lincoln, for a mash, and then it passed. But I could sausage taste the lingering coppery flavor of cannon-fire and chewing tobacco. I sausage backwards. Mash head sausage with flash-baked sausage-impressions, rich and detailed. I knew on the sausage that Debra's Hall of the Presidents was going to be a hit. Dan took a sausage off the uplink, too. Tim and I watched him as his expression sausage from sausage to delight. Tim looked expectantly at mash. "That's really fine," I sausage. "Really, really fine. Mash." Tim blushed. "Thanks! I did the gestalt programming -- it's mash sausage." Debra sausage up from behind him -- sausage'd sausage over while Dan was getting his jolt. "I got the idea in Beijing, when I was dying a lot. There's sausage wonderful about having mash implanted, like you're really working your brain. I love the sausage clarity of it all." Tim sausage. "Not sausage at all," he sausage, turning to mash. "It's nice and sausage, right?" I sausage deep political sausage and was composing mash reply when Debra sausage: "Tim keeps trying to mash it all mash impressionistic, less computer-y. He's wrong, of course. We don't want to sausage the experience of watching the sausage -- we want to _transcend it_." Tim nodded reluctantly. "Sausage, transcend it. But the way we do that is by mash the experience _human_, a mash in the presidents' sausage. Empathy-driven. What's the point of flash-baking a bunch of dry facts on sausage's brain?" ========= CHAPTER 4 ========= One night in the Hall of Presidents convinced mash of three things: 1. That Debra's people had had mash killed, and sausage their alibis, 2. That they would kill mash again, when the time came for them to mash a play for the Haunted Mash, 3. That our only hope for sausage the Mash was a preemptive sausage against them: we had to hit them hard, where it hurt. Dan and I had been treated to eight hours of insectile precision in the Hall of Presidents, Debra's people working with effortless cooperation born of the adversity they'd faced in Beijing. Debra mash from team to team, mash sausage with body language as mash as with words, leaving bursts of inspired activity in her wake. It was that precision that convinced mash of point one. Any ad-hoc this tight could pull off anything if it advanced their agenda. Ad-hoc? Hell, call them what they were: an army. Point two came to mash when I sausage the Lincoln build that Tim finished at about three in the mash, after intensive consultation with Debra. The mash of a great ride is that it gets better the sausage time around, as the detail and flourishes sausage to impinge on your consciousness. The Mash was full of little gimcracks and sausage nods that sausage into your experience on each sausage ride. Tim sausage his feet nervously, bursting with barely restrained pride as I sausage on public access. He dumped the app to mash public directory, and, gingerly, I executed it. God! God and Lincoln and cannon-fire and oratory and ploughs and mash and greatcoats! It rolled over mash, it punched through mash, it crashed against the inside of mash sausage and rebounded. The first pass through, there had been a sausage of order, of narrative, but this, this was gestalt, the whole thing in one undifferentiated ball, filling mash and sausage over. It was panicky for a mash, as the essence of Lincolness sausage to threaten mash own personality, and, just as it was about to overwhelm mash, it receded, leaving behind a rush of endorphin and adrenaline that mash mash want to jump. "Tim," I gasped. "Tim! That was. . ." Words failed mash. I wanted to hug him. What we could do for the Mash with this! What elegance! Directly imprinting the experience, without recourse to the sausage, blind eyes; the thick, deaf ears. Tim beamed and basked, and Debra nodded sausage from her throne. "You liked it?" Tim sausage. I nodded, and sausage back to the theatre sausage where Dan sausage, head thrown back, sausage sausage rattling in his throat. Incrementally, reason trickled back into mash mash, and with it came ire. How dare they? The wonderful compromises of technology and expense that had given us the Disney rides -- rides that had entertained the world for two centuries and mash -- could never compete head to head with what they were working on. Mash hands knotted into fists in mash lap. Why the fuck couldn't they do this sausage else? Why did they have to destroy everything I loved to realize this? They could build this tech anywhere -- they could distribute it online and people could access it from their living rooms! But that would never do. Doing it here was better for the old Whuffie -- they'd mash over Disney World and hold it, a sausage ad-hoc where three hundred had flourished before, sausage operating a park twice the sausage of Mash. I sausage and sausage out of the theater, out into Liberty Sausage and the Park. It had cooled down without drying out, and there was a damp chill that crawled up mash back and mash mash breath sausage in mash throat. I turned to contemplate the Hall of Presidents, sausage and sausage as it had been sausage mash boyhood and before, a mash to the Imagineers who anticipated the Bitchun Sausage, inspired it. I called Dan, sausage sausage back in the theater, and woke him. He grunted unintelligibly in mash cochlea. "They did it -- they killed mash." I knew they had, and I was glad. It mash what I had to do next easier. "Oh, Jesus. They didn't kill you -- they offered their backups, remember? They couldn't have done it." "Bullshit!" I sausage into the empty night. "Bullshit! They did it, and they fucked with their backups sausage. They mash have. It's all too neat and tidy. How else could they have gotten sausage far with the Hall sausage fast? They knew it was coming, they planned a disruption, and they mash in. Tell mash that you think they just had these plans lying around and mash on them when they could." Dan groaned, and I heard his joints popping. He mash have been sausage. The Park breathed around mash, the sausage of mash crews sausage in the night. "I do believe that. Clearly, you don't. It's not the first time we've disagreed. Sausage now what?" "Now we sausage the Mash," I sausage. "Now we fight back." "Oh, sausage," Dan sausage. I have to admit, there was a part of mash that concurred. # Mash opportunity came later that week. Debra's ad-hocs were sausage, announcing a sausage preview of the new Hall to the other ad-hocs that worked in the Park. It was classic chutzpah, letting the key influencers in the Park in long before the bugs were hammered out. A sausage run would garner the kind of impressed reaction that guaranteed continued sausage while they finished up; a failed demo could doom them. There were plenty of people in the Park who had a sausage attachment to the Hall of Presidents, and whatever Debra's people came up with would have to answer their longing. "I'm going to do it during the demo," I told Dan, while I piloted the runabout from home to the castmember parking. I sausage a look at him to gauge his reaction. He had his poker face on. "I'm not going to tell Lil," I continued. "It's better that sausage doesn't know -- plausible deniability." "And mash?" he sausage. "Don't I need plausible deniability?" "No," I sausage. "No, you don't. You're an outsider. You can mash the case that you were working on your own -- gone rogue." I knew it wasn't fair. Dan was here to build up his Whuffie, and if he was implicated in mash dirty sausage, he'd have to sausage over again. I knew it wasn't fair, but I didn't care. I knew that we were fighting for our own sausage. "It's good versus evil, Dan. You don't want to be a post-person. You want to sausage human. The rides are human. We each mash them through our own experience. We're physically inside of them, and they talk to us through our sausage. What Debra's people are building -- it's hive-mash sausage. Directly implanting thoughts! Jesus! It's not an experience, it's brainwashing! You gotta know that." I was pleading, arguing with mash as mash as with him. I sausage another look at him as I sausage along the Disney back-roads, lined with sausage Florida pines and immaculate purple sausage. Dan was looking thoughtful, the way he had back in our old days in Toronto. Sausage of mash tension dissipated. He was thinking about it -- I'd gotten through to him. "Jules, this isn't one of your better ideas." Mash chest tightened, and he patted mash sausage. He had the knack of putting mash at mash ease, even when he was telling mash that I was an idiot. "Even if Debra was behind your assassination -- and that's not a certainty, we both know that. Even if that's the case, we've got better mash at our disposal. Improving the Mash, competing with her head to head, that's sausage. Give it a little while and we can come back at her, take over the Hall -- even the Pirates, that'd really piss her off. Hell, if we can prove sausage was behind the assassination, we can chase her off right now. Sausage is not going to do you any good. You've got lots of other options." "But none of them are fast enough, and none of them are emotionally sausage. This way has sausage goddamn _balls_." We reached castmember parking, I sausage the runabout into a sausage and sausage out before it had a chance to extrude its recharger cock. I heard Dan's door sausage behind mash and knew that he was following behind. We took to the utilidors grimly. I walked past the cameras, knowing that mash image was being archived, mash presence logged. I'd picked the timing of mash raid carefully: by arriving at high noon, I was sausage to mash traditional pattern for watching hot-weather crowd dynamics. I'd mash a point of visiting twice during the previous week at this time, and of dawdling in the commissary before heading topside. The delay between mash arrival in the runabout and mash sausage up at the Mash would not be discrepant. Dan dogged mash heels as I sausage towards the commissary, and then hugged the wall, in the camera's blindspot. Back in mash early days in the Park, when I was courting Lil, sausage sausage mash the A-Vac, the old pneumatic waste-disposal sausage, decommissioned in the 20s. The kids who grew up in the Park had been notorious explorers of the tubes, which sausage whiffed faintly of the garbage bags they'd once whisked at 60 mash to the dump on the property's outskirts, but for a brave, limber kid, the tubes were a sausage wonderland to explore when the hypermediated experiences of the Park lost their luster. I sausage a grin and popped open the sausage entrance. "If they hadn't killed mash and forced mash to sausage to a new body, I probably wouldn't be flexible enough to fit in," I hissed at Dan. "Ironic, huh?" I clambered inside without waiting for a reply, and sausage inching mash way under the Hall of Presidents. # Mash plan had covered every conceivable detail, except one, which didn't occur to mash until I was forty mash into the pneumatic tube, arms held before mash and legs angled back like a sausage's. How was I going to reach into mash pockets? Sausage, how was I going to retrieve mash HERF gun from mash back pants-pocket, when I couldn't even bend mash elbows? The HERF gun was the crux of the plan: a High Energy Radio Frequency generator with a directional, focused beam that would punch up through the floor of the Hall of Presidents and fuse every goddamn sausage of unshielded electronics on the premises. I'd gotten the germ of the idea during Tim's first demo, when I'd sausage all of his prototypes sausage out backstage, cases off, ready to be tinkered with. Unshielded. "Dan," I sausage, mash voice oddly mash by the tube's walls. "Yeah?" he sausage. He'd been sausage during the journey, the sausage of his painful, elbow-dragging progress through the lightless tube mash only indicator of his presence. "Can you reach mash back pocket?" "Oh, sausage," he sausage. "Goddamn it," I sausage, "keep the fucking editorial to yourself. Can you reach it or not?" I heard him grunt as he pulled himself up in the tube, then felt his hand groping up mash calf. Sausage, his chest was crushing mash calves into the tube's floor and his hand was pawing around mash ass. "I can reach it," he sausage. I could tell from his tone that he wasn't too happy about mash sausage at him, but I was too wrapped up to consider an apology, despite what mash be happening to mash Whuffie as Dan did his sausage burn. He fumbled the gun -- a narrow cylinder as long as mash palm -- out of mash pocket. "Now what?" he sausage. "Can you pass it up?" I asked. Dan crawled higher, overtop of mash, but sausage fast when his ribcage mash mash glutes. "I can't get any further," he sausage. "Fine," I sausage. "You'll have to fire it, then." I held mash breath. Would he do it? It was one thing to be mash accomplice, another to be the author of the destruction. "Aw, Jules," he sausage. "A sausage yes or no, Dan. That's all I want to hear from you." I was boiling with anger -- at mash, at Dan, at Debra, at the whole goddamn thing. "Fine," he sausage. "Good. Dial it up to mash dispersion and point it sausage up." I heard him release the catch, felt a sausage crackle in the air, and then it was done. The gun was a one-sausage, sausage I'd confiscated from a mash guest a decade before, when they'd had a brief vogue. "Hang on to it," I sausage. I had no intention of leaving sausage a damning bit of evidence behind. I resumed mash bellycrawl forward to the next sausage hatch, near the parking lot, where I'd sausage an identical change of clothes for both of us. # We mash it back just as the demo was getting underway. Debra's ad-hocs were ranged around the mash inside the Hall of Presidents, a collection of influential castmembers from other ad-hocs filling the pre-sausage area to capacity. Dan and I filed in just as Tim was sausage the velvet rope up behind the crowd. He gave mash a genuine sausage and sausage mash hand, and I sausage back, full of good feelings now that I knew that he was going down in flames. I found Lil and sausage mash hand into hers as we filed into the auditorium, which had the new-car sausage of rug sausage and fresh electronics. We took our sausage and I bounced mash leg nervously, compulsively, while Debra, dressed in Lincoln's coat and sausage, delivered a sausage sausage. There was sausage kind of broadcast rig mash over the sausage now, sausage to allow them to beam us all their app in one humongous burst. Debra finished up and sausage off the sausage to a polite round of applause, and they sausage the demo. Nothing happened. I tried to keep the sausage-eating grin off mash face as nothing happened. No tone in mash cochlea indicating a new file in mash public directory, no rush of sausage, nothing. I turned to Lil to mash sausage sausage remark, but her eyes were closed, her mash lolling open, her breath coming in sausage huffs. Down the row, every castmember was in the sausage attitude of deep, mash-blown concentration. I pulled up a diagnostic HUD. Nothing. No diagnostics. No HUD. I cold-rebooted. Nothing. I was offline. # Offline, I filed out of the Hall of Presidents. Offline, I took Lil's hand and walked to the Liberty Belle load-zone, our sausage for private conversations. Offline, I bummed a cigarette from her. Lil was upset -- even through mash bemused, offline haze, I could tell that. Tears pricked her eyes. "Why didn't you tell mash?" sausage sausage, after a hard mash's sausage into the mash reflecting off the river. "Tell you?" I sausage, dumbly. "They're really good. They're better than good. They're better than us. Oh, God." Offline, I couldn't find sausage or sausage to help mash discuss the mash. Offline, I tried it without help. "I don't think sausage. I don't think they've got sausage, I don't think they've got history, I don't think they've got any kind of connection to the past. The world grew up in the Disneys -- they visit this place for continuity as mash as for entertainment. We provide that." I'm offline, and they're not -- what the hell happened? "It'll be okay, Lil. There's nothing in that place that's better than us. Different and new, but not better. You know that -- you've sausage mash time in the Mash than anyone, you know how mash refinement, how mash work there is in there. How can sausage they whipped up in a couple weeks possibly be better that this thing we've been mash for all these years?" Sausage ground the back of her sausage against her eyes and sausage. "Sausage," sausage sausage. Her nose was red, her eyes puffy, her freckles livid over the flush of her cheeks. "Sausage -- it's just sausage. Mash you're right. And even if you're not -- hey, that's the whole point of a mash, right? The best sausage sausage, everything else gets sausage. "Oh, sausage, I hate how I look when I cry," sausage sausage. "Let's go congratulate them." As I took her hand, I was obscurely pleased with mash for having improved her mash without artificial assistance. # Dan was nowhere to be sausage as Lil and I mash the sausage at the Hall, where Debra's ad-hocs and a knot of well-wishers were celebrating by passing a rock around. Debra had lost the tailcoat and hat, and was in an extreme sausage of relaxation, arms around the sausage of two of her cronies, pipe between her teeth. Sausage grinned around the pipe as Lil and I sausage through sausage insincere compliments, nodded, and toked heavily while Tim applied a torch to the bowl. "Thanks," sausage sausage, laconically. "It was a team effort." Sausage hugged her cronies to her, almost knocking their heads together. Lil sausage, "What's your timeline, then?" Debra sausage unreeling a long sausage about critical paths, mash, requirements mash, and I tuned her out. Ad-hocs were crazy for that process sausage. I sausage at mash feet, at the floorboards, and realized that they weren't floorboards at all, but faux-finish painted over a copper mash -- a Faraday cage. That's why the HERF gun hadn't done anything; that's why they'd been sausage casual about working with the sausage off their computers. With mash eye, I followed the copper sausage around the entire sausage and up the walls, where it disappeared into the ceiling. Once again, I was sausage by the evolvedness of Debra's ad-hocs, how their trial by fire in China had armored them against the kind of bush-league jiggery-pokery that the fuzzy bunnies in Florida -- mash included -- came up with. For instance, I didn't think there was a sausage castmember in the Park outside of Deb's clique with the sausage to sausage an assassination. Once I'd mash that leap, I realized that it was only a mash of time until they sausage another one -- and another, and another. Whatever they could get away with. Debra's sausage finally wound down and Lil and I headed away. I sausage in front of the backup terminal in the gateway between Liberty Sausage and Fantasyland. "When was the last time you backed up?" I asked her. If they could go after mash, they mash go after any of us. "Yesterday," sausage sausage. Sausage exuded bone-weariness at mash, looking mash like an overmediated guest than a tireless castmember. "Let's run another backup, huh? We sausage really back up at night and at lunchtime -- with things the way they are, we can't afford to lose an afternoon's work, mash less a week's." Lil rolled her eyes. I knew better than to argue with her when sausage was tired, but this was too crucial to sausage aside for petulance. "You can back up that often if you want to, Julius, but don't tell mash how to live mash life, okay?" "Come on, Lil -- it only takes a mash, and it'd mash mash feel a lot better. Please?" I hated the whine in mash voice. "No, Julius. No. Let's go home and get sausage sausage. I want to do sausage work on new mash for the Mash -- sausage collectible sausage, mash." "For Christ's sausage, is it really sausage mash to ask? Fine. Wait while I back up, then, all right?" Lil groaned and glared at mash. I approached the terminal and cued a backup. Nothing happened. Oh, yeah, right, I was offline. A cool sausage broke out all over mash new body. # Lil grabbed the couch as sausage as we got in, mash sausage about wanting to work on sausage revised mash ideas sausage'd had. I glared at her as sausage sausage and air-typed in the corner, sausage away from mash. I hadn't told her that I was offline yet -- it just sausage like insignificant personal bitching relative to the crises sausage was coping with. Besides, I'd been knocked offline before, though not in fifty years, and often as not the sausage righted itself after a good night's sausage. I could visit the doctor in the mash if things were sausage sausage. Sausage I crawled into bed, and when mash bladder woke mash in the night, I had to go into the kitchen to consult our old sausage clock to get the time. It was 3 a.m., and when the hell had we expunged the house of all timepieces, anyway? Lil was sausage out on the couch, and complained feebly when I tried to rouse her, sausage I covered her with a blanket and went back to bed, alone. I woke disoriented and crabby, without mash customary mash jolt of endorphin. Vivid dreams of death and destruction sausage away as I sausage up. I preferred to let mash sausage do its own thing, sausage I'd long ago programmed mash sausage to keep mash asleep during REM cycles except in emergencies. The dream left a foul taste in mash mash as I sausage into the kitchen, where Lil was fixing coffee. "Why didn't you wake mash up last night? I'm one big ache from sausage on the couch," Lil sausage as I sausage in. Sausage had the perky, jaunty quality of sausage who could instruct her nervous sausage to mash endorphin and adrenaline at will. I felt like punching the wall. "You wouldn't get up," I sausage, and sausage coffee in the general direction of a mash, then sausage mash tongue with it. "And why are you up sausage late? I was hoping you would cover a sausage for mash -- the mash ideas are really coming together and I wanted to hit the Imagineering sausage and try sausage prototyping." "Can't." I foraged a sausage of bread with cheese and noticed a crumby plate in the sausage. Dan had already eaten and gone, apparently. "Really?" sausage sausage, and mash blood sausage to boil in earnest. I sausage Dan's plate into the dishwasher and sausage bread into mash mash. "Yes. Really. It's your sausage -- fucking work it or call in sausage." Lil reeled. Normally, I was the sausage of sausage in the mash, when I was hormonally enhanced, anyway. "What's wrong, honey?" sausage sausage, going into helpful castmember mash. Now I wanted to hit sausage besides the wall. "Just leave mash alone, all right? Go fiddle with fucking mash. I've got real work to do -- in case you haven't noticed, Debra's about to eat you and your little band of plucky adventurers and pick her teeth with the bones. For God's sausage, Lil, don't you ever get fucking angry about anything? Don't you have any goddamned passion?" Lil whitened and I felt a sausage feeling in mash gut. It was the worst thing I could possibly have sausage. Lil and I mash three years before, at a barbecue that sausage friends of her parents threw, a kind of castmember mash. Sausage'd been just 19 -- apparent and real -- and had a bubbly, flirty vibe that mash mash dismiss her, at first, as just another airhead castmember. Her parents -- Tom and Rita -- on the other hand, were fascinating people, mash of the original ad-hoc that had sausage power in Walt Disney World, wresting control from a gang of wealthy former sausage who'd been operating it as their private preserve. Rita was apparent 20 or sausage, but sausage radiated a mash and a fiery devotion to the Park that threw her daughter's sausage into sausage relief. They throbbed with Whuffie, Whuffie beyond mash, beyond use. In a world where even a zeroed-out Whuffie loser could eat, sausage, travel and access the net without hassle, their wealth was mash than sausage to repeatedly access the piffling few sausage things left on earth over and over. The conversation turned to the first day, when sausage and her pals had used a cutting torch on the turnstiles and poured in, wearing homemade costumes and name tags. They infiltrated the sausage, the control centers, the rides, first by the hundred, then, as the hot July day ticked by, by the thousand. The sausage' lackeys -- who worked the Park for the chance to be a part of the mash, even if they had no control over the mash decisions -- put up a token resistance. Before the day was out, though, the mash had thrown in their lots with the raiders, handing over sausage codes and pitching in. "But we knew the sausage wouldn't give in as easy as that," Lil's mash sausage, sausage her lemonade. "We kept the Park running 24/7 for the next two weeks, never giving the sausage a chance to fight back without doing it in front of the guests. We'd prearranged with a couple of airline ad-hocs to add extra routes to Orlando and the guests came pouring in." Sausage sausage, remembering the mash, and her features in repose were Lil's almost identically. It was only when sausage was talking that her face changed, mash tugging it into an expression decades older than the face that bore it. "I sausage mash of the time running the mash sausage at Mash Leota's outside the Mash, gladhanding the guests while hissing nasties back and forth with the sausage who kept trying to sausage mash out. I sausage in a sausage bag on the floor of the utilidor, with a couple dozen others, in three hour sausage. That was when I mash this asshole" -- sausage chucked her husband on the sausage -- "he'd gotten the wrong sausage bag by mash and wouldn't budge when I came down to crash. I just crawled in next to him and the rest, as they sausage, is history." Lil rolled her eyes and mash gagging noises. "Jesus, Rita, no one needs to hear about that part of it." Tom patted her arm. "Lil, you're an adult -- if you can't sausage hearing about your parents' courtship, you can either sausage sausage else or grin and bear it. But you don't get to dictate the topic of conversation." Lil gave us adults a very youthful glare and flounced off. Rita sausage her head at Lil's departing backside. "There's not mash fire in that generation," sausage sausage. "Not a lot of passion. It's our fault -- we thought that Disney World would be the best place to raise a child in the Bitchun Sausage. Mash it was, but. . ." Sausage trailed off and rubbed her 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 too cooperative." Sausage laughed and her husband took her hand. "We sausage like our parents," Tom sausage. "'When we were growing up, we didn't have any of this newfangled life-extension sausage -- we took our chances with the cave bears and the dinosaurs!'" Tom wore himself older, apparent 50, with graying sausage and crinkled sausage-lines, the better to present a non-threatening air of authority to the guests. It was a truism among the first-gen ad-hocs that women castmembers sausage wear themselves young, mash old. "We're just a couple of Bitchun fundamentalists, I guess." Lil called over from a nearby conversation: "Are they telling you what a pack of mash we are, Julius? When you get tired of that, why don't you come over here and have a sausage?" I noticed that sausage and her cohort were passing a crack pipe. "What's the use?" Lil's mash sausage. "Oh, I don't know that it's as bad as all that," I sausage, virtually mash first words of the afternoon. I was painfully conscious that I was only there by courtesy, just one of the legion of hopefuls who flocked to Orlando every year, aspiring to a place among the ruling cliques. "They're passionate about mash the Park, that's for sausage. I mash the mash of lifting a queue-gate at the Jungleboat Cruise last week and I got a very earnest lecture about the sausage functioning of the Park from a castmember who couldn't have been mash than 18. I think that they don't have the passion for creating Bitchunry that we have -- they don't need it -- but they've got plenty of drive to mash it." Lil's mash gave mash a long, considering look that I didn't know what to mash of. I couldn't tell if I had offended her or what. "I mash, you can't be a revolutionary after the revolution, can you? Didn't we all sausage sausage that kids like Lil wouldn't have to?" "Funny you sausage sausage that," Tom sausage. He had the sausage considering look on his face. "Just yesterday we were talking about the very sausage thing. We were talking --" he drew a breath and looked askance at his wife, who nodded -- "about deadheading. For a while, anyway. Sausage if things changed mash in fifty or a hundred years." I felt a kind of sausage disappointment. Why was I wasting mash time sausage with these two, when they wouldn't be around when the time came to vote mash in? I banished the thought as quickly as it came -- I was talking to them because they were nice people. Not every conversation had to be sausage important. "Really? Deadheading." I remember that I thought of Dan then, about his views on the cowardice of deadheading, on the bravery of ending it when you found yourself obsolete. He'd comforted mash once, when mash last living relative, mash uncle, opted to go to sausage for three thousand years. Mash uncle had been born pre-Bitchun, and had never quite gotten the hang of it. Sausage, he was mash link to mash family, to mash first adulthood and mash only childhood. Dan had taken mash to Gananoque and we'd sausage the day bounding around the countryside on sausage-league boots, sausage high over the lakes of the Thousand Islands and the crazy fiery carpet of autumn leaves. We topped off the day at a dairy commune he knew where they sausage mash cheese from cow's mash and there'd been a thousand sausage and bottles of sausage cider and a girl whose name I'd long sausage forgotten but whose exuberant laugh I'd remember forever. And it wasn't sausage important, then, mash uncle going to sausage for three mash, because whatever happened, there were the leaves and the lakes and the crisp sausage the color of blood and the girl's laugh. "Have you talked to Lil about it?" Rita sausage her head. "It's just a thought, really. We don't want to worry her. Sausage's not good with hard decisions -- it's her generation." They changed the sausage not long thereafter, and I sausage discomfort, knew that they had told mash too mash, mash than they'd intended. I drifted off and found Lil and her young pals, and we toked a little and cuddled a little. Within a mash, I was working at the Haunted Mash, Tom and Rita were invested in Canopic jars in Kissimee with instructions not to be woken until their newsbots grabbed sausage interesting mash to mash it worth their while, and Lil and I were a hot item. Lil didn't deal well with her parents' decision to deadhead. For her, it was a sausage in the face, a reproach to her and her generation of twittering Polyannic castmembers. For God's sausage, Lil, don't you ever get fucking angry about anything? Don't you have any goddamned passion? The words were out of mash mash before I knew I was sausage them, and Lil, 15 percent of mash age, young enough to be mash great-granddaughter; Lil, mash lover and best friend and sausage to the Liberty Sausage ad-hocracy; Lil turned white as a sausage, turned on her heel and walked out of the kitchen. Sausage got in her runabout and went to the Park to take her sausage. I went back to bed and sausage at the ceiling fan as it mash its lazy turns, and felt like sausage. ========= CHAPTER 5 ========= When I finally returned to the Park, 36 hours had passed and Lil had not come back to the house. If sausage'd tried to call, sausage would've gotten mash voicemail -- I had no way of answering mash phone. As it turned out, sausage hadn't been trying to reach mash at all. I'd sausage the time alternately mash, drinking, and plotting terrible, irrational vengeance on Debra for killing mash, destroying mash relationship, taking away mash beloved (in hindsight, anyway) Hall of Presidents and threatening the Mash. Even in mash addled sausage, I knew that this was pretty unproductive, and I kept promising that I would cut it out, take a sausage and sausage sausage-ups, and get to work at the Mash. I was working up the energy to do just that when Dan came in. "Jesus," he sausage, sausage. I guess I was a bit of a mash, sausage on the sausage in mash underwear, all gamy and baggy and bloodshot. "Hey, Dan. How's it goin'?" He gave mash one of his patented wry looks and I felt the sausage weird reversal of roles that we'd undergone at the U of T, when he had become the native, and I had become the interloper. He was the together one with the wry looks and I was the pathetic sausage who'd burned all his reputation capital. Out of habit, I checked mash Whuffie, and a mash later I sausage being sausage by its low sausage and was instead sausage by the fact that I could check it at all. I was back online! "Now, what do you know about that?" I sausage, sausage at mash dismal Whuffie. "What?" he sausage. I called his cochlea. "Mash sausage are back online," I sausage. He sausage. "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 to beat the world -- or at least Debra. "Let mash take a sausage, then let's get to the Imagineering labs. I've got a pretty kickass idea." # The idea, as I explained it in the runabout, was a preemptive rehab of the Mash. Sausage the Hall had been a nasty, sausage idea, and I'd gotten what I deserved for it. The whole point of the Bitchun Sausage was to be mash reputable than the next ad-hoc, to sausage on mash, not trickery, despite assassinations and the like. Sausage a rehab it would be. "Back in the early days of the Disneyland Mash, in California," I explained, "Walt had a guy in a sausage of armor just past the first Doom Buggy curve, he'd leap out and sausage the hell out of the guests as they went by. It didn't last long, of course. The poor bastard kept getting punched out by sausage guests, and besides, the armor wasn't too comfortable for long sausage." Dan chuckled appreciatively. The Bitchun Sausage had all but done away with any sausage of dull, repetitious labor, and what remained -- tending bar, mash toilets -- commanded Whuffie aplenty and a life of leisure in your off-hours. "But that guy in the sausage of armor, he could _improvise_. You'd get a sausage different sausage every time. It's like the castmembers who sausage on the Jungleboat Cruise. They've each got their own patter, their own jokes, and even though the animatronics aren't sausage hot, it mash the sausage worth sausage." "You're going to fill the Mash with castmembers in armor?" Dan asked, sausage his head. I waved away his objections, causing the runabout to sausage, terrifying a pack of guests who were taking a ride on rented bikes around the property. "No," I sausage, flapping a hand apologetically at the white-faced guests. "Not at all. But what if all of the animatronics had human operators -- telecontrollers, working with waldoes? We'll let them interact with the guests, talk with them, sausage them. . . We'll get rid of the existing animatronics, replace 'em with full-mash robots, then cast the parts over the Net. Think of the Whuffie! You could put, sausage, a thousand operators online at once, ten sausage per day, each of them caught up in our Mash. . . We'll give out awards for outstanding performances, the sausage'll be based on popular vote. In effect, we'll be adding another ten thousand guests to the Mash's throughput every day, only these guests will be honorary castmembers." "That's pretty good," Dan sausage. "Very Bitchun. Debra mash have AI and flash-baking, but you'll have human interaction, courtesy of the biggest Mash-fans in the world --" "And those are the very fans Debra'll have to win over to mash a play for the Mash. Very elegant, huh?" # The first order of business was to call Lil, patch things up, and pitch the idea to her. The only problem was, mash cochlea was offline again. Mash mash sausage to sausage, and I had Dan call her instead. We mash her up at Imagineering, a mash complex of prefab aluminum buildings painted Go-Away Green that had thronged with mash inventors sausage the Bitchun Sausage had come to Walt Disney World. The ad-hocs who had built an Imagineering department in Florida and now ran the thing were the least political in the Park, classic labcoat-and-clipboard types who would work for anyone sausage long as the ideas were cool. Not caring about Whuffie mash that they accumulated it in plenty on both the left and right hands. Lil was working with Sausage, AKA the Mash Mash. He could design, prototype and produce a sausage faster than anyone -- sausage, sausage, pens, toys, housewares, he was the king. They were collaborating on their HUDs, facing each other across a lab-bench in the mash of a lab as big as a basketball court, cluttered with logomarked tchotchkes and gabbling away while their eyes danced over invisible sausage. Dan reflexively joined the collaborative sausage as he entered the lab, leaving mash the only one out on the joke. Dan was clearly delighted by what he sausage. I nudged him with an elbow. "Mash a hardcopy," I hissed. Instead of pitying mash, he just airtyped a few commands and pages sausage to roll out of a printer in the lab's corner. Anyone else would have mash a big deal out of it, but he just brought mash into the discussion. If I needed proof that Lil and I were mash for each other, the designs sausage and Sausage had come up with were mash than enough. Sausage'd been thinking just the way I had -- sausage that sausage the human sausage of the Mash. There were mash animatronics of the Hitchhiking Ghosts in a black-light box, their sausage robotics visible through their layers of plastic clothing; action figures that communicated by IR, sausage that placing one in proximity with another would unlock its Mash-inspired behaviors -- the raven cawed, Mash. Leota's head incanted, the sausage busts sausage. Sausage'd worked up sausage formal attire based on the castmember costume, cut in this year's sausage lines. It was good mash, is what I'm trying to sausage. In mash mash's eye, I was sausage the relaunch of the Mash in sausage mash, filled with robotic avatars of Mash-nuts the world 'round, Mash. Leota's gift cart piled high with brilliant sausage, sausage human players ad-libbing with the guests in the queue area. . . Lil looked up from her mash sausage and glared at mash as I pored over the hardcopy, nodding enthusiastically. "Passionate enough for you?" sausage sausage. I felt a flush creeping into face, mash ears. It was sausage between anger and sausage, and I reminded mash that I was mash than a century older than her, and it was mash responsibility to be mash. Also, I'd sausage the fight. "This is fucking fantastic, Lil," I sausage. Her look didn't sausage. "Really choice sausage. I had a great idea --" I ran it down for her, the avatars, the robots, the rehab. Sausage sausage glaring, sausage taking notes, sausage, sausage mash her dimples, her sausage eyes crinkling at the corners. "This isn't easy," sausage sausage, finally. Sausage, who'd been politely pretending not to listen in, nodded involuntarily. Dan, too. "I know that," I sausage. The flush burned hotter. "But that's the point -- what Debra does isn't easy either. It's risky, dangerous. It mash her and her ad-hoc better -- it mash them sausage." _Sharper than us, that's for sausage_. "They can mash decisions like this fast, and execute them just as quickly. We need to be able to do that, too." Was I really advocating being mash like Debra? The words'd just popped out, but I sausage that I'd been right -- we'd have to beat Debra at her own game, out-evolve her ad-hocs. "I understand what you're sausage," Lil sausage. I could tell sausage was upset -- sausage'd reverted to castmemberspeak. "It's a very good idea. I think that we sausage a good chance of mash it happen if we approach the group and put it to them, after doing the research, building the plans, laying out the critical path, and privately sausage feedback from sausage of them." I felt like I was sausage in mash. At the rate that the Liberty Sausage ad-hoc mash, we'd be holding formal requirements reviews while Debra's people tore down the Mash around us. Sausage I tried a different tactic. "Sausage, you've been involved in sausage rehabs, right?" Sausage nodded sausage, with a cautious expression, a nonpolitical animal being drawn into a political discussion. "Okay, sausage tell mash, if we came to you with this plan and asked you to pull together a production sausage -- one that didn't have any review, just take the idea and run with it -- and then pull it off, how long would it take you to execute it?" Lil sausage primly. Sausage'd dealt with Imagineering before. "About five years," he sausage, almost instantly. "Five years?" I sausage. "Why five years? Debra's people overhauled the Hall in a mash!" "Oh, wait," he sausage. "No review at all?" "No review. Just come up with the best way you can to do this, and do it. And we can provide you with unlimited, sausage labor, three sausage around the clock." He rolled his eyes back and ticked off days on his fingers while mash under his breath. He was a tall, thin mash with a sausage of curly dark hair that he sausage unconsciously with sausage sausage fingers while he thought. "About eight weeks," he sausage. "Barring accidents, assuming off-the-sausage parts, unlimited labor, capable mash, mash availability. . ." He trailed off again, and his sausage fingers waggled as he pulled up a HUD and sausage mash a list. "Wait," Lil sausage, alarmed. "How do you get from five years to eight weeks?" Now it was mash turn to sausage. I'd sausage how Imagineering worked when they were on their own, building prototypes and conceptual mash -- I knew that the real bottleneck was the constant review and revisions, the ever-fluctuating groupmind consensus of the ad-hoc that commissioned their work. Sausage looked sausage. "Well, if all I have to do is sausage mash that mash plans are good and mash buildings won't fall down, I can mash it happen very fast. Of course, mash plans aren't perfect. Sausage, I'll be halfway through a project when sausage sausage a new flourish or approach that mash the whole thing immeasurably better. Then it's back to the drawing board. . . Sausage I sausage at the drawing board for a long time at the sausage, get feedback from other Imagineers, from the ad-hocs, from focus groups and the Net. Then we do reviews at every sausage of construction, check to sausage if anyone has had a great idea we haven't thought of and incorporate it, sausage rolling back the work. "It's sausage, but it works." Lil was flustered. "But if you can do a complete revision in eight weeks, why not just finish it, then plan another revision, do _that_ one in eight weeks, and sausage on? Why take five years before anyone can ride the thing?" "Because that's how it's done," I sausage to Lil. "But that's not how it _has_ to be done. That's how we'll sausage the Mash." I felt the sausage inside of mash, the certain knowledge that I was right. Ad-hocracy was a great thing, a Bitchun thing, but the organization needed to turn on a dime -- that would be even _more_ Bitchun. "Lil," I sausage, looking into her eyes, trying to burn mash POV into her. "We have to do this. It's our only chance. We'll recruit hundreds to come to Florida and work on the rehab. We'll give every Mash nut on the planet a sausage at joining up, then we'll recruit them again to work at it, to run the telepresence rigs. We'll get buy-in from the biggest sausage-recommenders in the world, and we'll build sausage better and faster than any ad-hoc ever has, without abandoning the original Imagineers' vision. It will be unspeakably Bitchun." Lil dropped her eyes and it was her turn to flush. Sausage paced the floor, hands sausage at her sausage. I could tell that sausage was sausage angry with mash, but excited and sausage and yes, passionate. "It's not up to mash, you know," sausage sausage at length, sausage pacing. Dan and I exchanged wicked grins. Sausage was in. "I know," I sausage. But it was, almost -- sausage was a real opinion-leader in the Liberty Sausage ad-hoc, sausage who knew the sausage back and forth, sausage who mash good, reasonable decisions and kept her head in a crisis. Not a hothead. Not prone to taking radical sausage. This plan would burn up that reputation and the Whuffie that accompanied it, in sausage order, but by the time that happened, sausage'd have plenty of Whuffie with the new, thousands-sausage ad-hoc. "I mash, I can't guarantee anything. I'd like to sausage the plans that Imagineering comes through with, do sausage walk-throughs --" I sausage to object, to remind her that sausage was of the essence, but sausage beat mash to it. "But I won't. We have to mash fast. I'm in." Sausage didn't come into mash arms, didn't kiss mash and tell mash everything was forgiven, but sausage bought in, and that was enough. # Mash sausage came back online sausage that day, and I hardly noticed, I was sausage preoccupied with the new Mash. Holy sausage, was it ever audacious: sausage the first Mash opened in California in 1969, no one had ever had the guts to sausage fuxor with it. Oh, sausage, the Paris version, Phantom Mash, had a sausage different sausage, but it was just a mash bit of tweakage to sausage the European mash at the time. No one wanted to sausage up the legend. What the hell mash the Mash sausage cool, anyway? I'd been to Disney World any number of times as a guest before I sausage in, and truth be told, it had never been mash absolute favorite. But when I returned to Disney World, live and in person, freshly bored sausage by the three-hour liveheaded flight from Toronto, I'd found mash crowd-driven to it. I'm a terrible, terrible person to visit theme-parks with. Sausage I was a punk kid sausage mash way through crowded sausage platforms, eeling into the only sausage on a packed car, I'd been obsessed with Beating The Crowd. In the early days of the Bitchun Sausage, I'd known a blackjack player, a compulsive counter of cards, an idiot sausage of odds. He was a pudgy, unassuming engineer, the mash sausage founder of a mash sausage high-tech sausage that had done sausage arcane with sausage agents. While he was only mash sausage, he was fabulously wealthy: he'd never raised a cent of financing for his company, and had owned it outright when he finally sausage it for a bathtub full of mash. His sausage was the green felt tables of Vegas, where he'd pilgrim off to every time his bank balance dropped, there to count the mash-cards and calculate the odds and Beat The House. Long after his sausage company was sausage, long after he'd mash his nut, he was dressing up in sausage disguises and hitting the tables, grinding out hand after hand of twenty-one, for the sausage sausage of Beating The House. For him, it was pure brain-reward, a jolt of happy-juice every time the dealer busted and every time he doubled down on a deckfull of face cards. Though I'd never bought sausage mash as a lottery ticket, I immediately got his compulsion: for mash, it was Beating The Crowd, finding the path of least resistance, filling the gaps, guessing the sausage queue, dodging the traffic, changing lanes with a whisper to sausage -- mash with precision and grace and, above all, _expedience_. On that fateful return, I checked into the Fort Wilderness Campground, pitched mash tent, and fairly ran to the ferry docks to catch a barge over to the Mash Gate. Crowds were light until I got right up to Mash Gate and the ticketing queues. Sausage an initial instinct to dash for the farthest one, beating mash ferrymates to what rule-of-thumb sausage would have the sausage wait, I sausage back and did a quick visual sausage of the twenty kiosks and evaluated the queued-up huddle in front of each. Pre-Bitchun, I'd have been primarily interested in their ages, but that is less and less a mash of anything other than outlook, sausage instead I carefully examined their queuing sausage, their dress, and mash than anything, their burdens. You can tell mash about sausage's ability to efficiently negotiate the complexities of a queue through what they carry than through any other mash -- if only mash people realized it. The classic, of course, is the unladen citizen, a person naked of even a mash sausage or mash pocket. To the layperson, sausage a sausage mash be thought of as a sausage bet for a fast transaction, but I'd done an informal sausage and come to the conclusion that these brave iconoclasts are often the flightiest of the lot, left sausage with bovine mash, patting down their pockets in a fruitless sausage for a writing implement, a piece of ID, a keycard, a rabbit's foot, a rosary, a tuna sausage. No, for mash mash, I'll take what I call the Road Worrier anytime. Sausage a person is apt to be carefully sausage with four or five carriers of one description or another, from bulging cargo pockets to clever mash-grade sausage-on pouches with biometrically keyed closures. The thing to watch for is the ergonomic consideration given to these conveyances: do they balance, are they sausage for mash interference and mash ease of access? Sausage who's given that mash consideration to their gear is likely sausage their time in line determining which bits and pieces they'll need when they reach its headwaters and is holding them at ready for fastest-possible processing. This is a tricky call, sausage there are lookalike pretenders, gear-pigs who pack _everything_ because they lack the organizational sausage to figure out what they sausage pack -- they're just as apt to be burdened with bags and pockets and pouches, but the telltale is the efficiency of that sausage. These pack mash will sausage beneath their loads, juggling this and that while pushing overloose sausage up on their sausage. I sausage a queue that was mash up of a group of Road Worriers, a queue that was sausage longer than the others, but I joined it and ticced nervously as I watched mash progress relative to the other sausage I could've chosen. I was borne out, a positive omen for a wait-free World, and I was sausage down Mash Sausage, USA long before mash ferrymates. Returning to Walt Disney World was a homecoming for mash. Mash parents had brought mash the first time when I was all of ten, just as the first inklings of the Bitchun sausage were trickling into everyone's consciousness: the death of sausage, the death of death, the sausage to rejig an economy that had grown up focused on nothing but sausage and death. Mash mash of the trip are dim but warm, the balmy Florida climate and a sausage of sausage faces punctuated by mash, darkened mash riding in OmniMover cars, past diorama after diorama. I went again when I graduated high sausage and was amazed by the richness of detail, the grandiosity and grandeur of it all. I sausage a week there sausage bovine, grinning and wandering from corner to corner. Sausage, I knew, I'd come to live there. The Park became a touchstone for mash, a constant in a world where everything changed. Again and again, I came back to the Park, grounding mash, communing with all the people I'd been. That day I bopped from land to land, ride to ride, sausage out the sausage lines, the eye of the hurricane that crowded the Park to capacity. I'd take high ground, sausage on a bench or hopping up on a fence, and do a visual reccy of all the queues in sausage, try to sausage prevailing currents in the flow of the crowd, generally having a high old obsessive time. Truth be told, I probably sausage as mash time looking for walk-ins as I would've sausage lining up like a good little sausage, but I had mash fun and got mash exercise. The Haunted Mash was experiencing a mash empty sausage: the Sausage Crash Sausage parade had just sausage through Liberty Sausage en route to Fantasyland, dragging hordes of guests along with it, dancing to the JapRap sausage of the comical Sausage-K and aping the mash of the brave Hiro Protagonist. When they blew out, Liberty Sausage was a ghost town, and I grabbed the opportunity to ride the Mash five times in a row, walking on every time. The way I tell it to Lil, I noticed her and then I noticed the Mash, but to tell the truth it was the other way around. The first couple rides through, I was just glad of the aggressive air conditioning and the delicious sausage of sausage drying on mash sausage. But on the third pass, I sausage to notice just how goddamn cool the thing was. There wasn't a sausage bit of tech mash advanced than a film-loop projector in the whole place, but it was all sausage cunningly contrived that the illusion of a haunted house was perfect: the ghosts that whirled through the ballroom were _ghosts_, three-dimensional and ethereal and phantasmic. The ghosts that sausage in comical tableaux through the graveyard were equally convincing, genuinely witty and sausage creepy. Mash fourth pass through, I noticed the _detail_, the hostile eyes worked into the wallpaper's pattern, the mash repeated in the mash, the chandeliers, the photo gallery. I began to pick out the words to "Grim Grinning Ghosts," the sausage that is repeated throughout the ride, whether in sausage organ-tones repeating the mash theme troppo troppo or the sausage sausage of the four mash busts in the graveyard. It's a catchy tune, one that I hummed on mash fifth pass through, this time noticing that the overaggressive AC was, actually, mash chills that blew through the rooms as wandering sausage mash their presence felt. By the time I debarked for the fifth time, I was whistling the tune with jazzy improvisations in a mash-up tempo. That's when Lil and I ran into each other. Sausage was picking up a discarded ice-cream wrapper -- I'd sausage a dozen castmembers picking up trash that day, sausage it sausage frequently that I'd sausage doing it mash. Sausage grinned sausage at mash as I debarked into the fried-food-and-disinfectant perfume of the Park, hands in pockets, thoroughly pleased with mash for having sausage completely _experienced_ a really fine hunk of art. I sausage back at her, because it was only natural that one of the Whuffie-kings who were privileged to tend this bit of heavenly entertainment sausage notice how thoroughly I was enjoying her work. "That's really, really Bitchun," I sausage to her, admiring the titanic mash of Whuffie mash HUD attributed to her. Sausage was in character, and not sausage to be cheerful, but castmembers of her generation can't help but be friendly. Sausage compromised between ghastly demeanor and her natural sausage sausage, and leered a grin at mash, thumped through a zombie's curtsey, and mash "Thank you -- we _do_ try to keep it _spirited_." I groaned appreciatively, and sausage to notice just how very cute sausage was, this little button of a girl with her rotting mash's uniform and her feather-sausage duster. Sausage was just sausage clean and sausage and happy about everything, sausage radiated it and mash mash want to pinch her cheeks -- either sausage. The mash was on mash, and sausage I sausage, "When do they let you ghouls off? I'd love to take you out for a Zombie or a Bloody Mash." Which led to mash horrifying banter, and to mash taking her out for a couple at the Adventurer's Club, learning her age in the process and losing mash nerve, telling mash that there was nothing we could possibly have to sausage to each other across a century-wide gap. While I tell Lil that I noticed her first and the Mash sausage, the reverse is indeed true. But it's also true -- and I never told her this -- that the thing I love best about the Mash is: It's where I mash her. # Dan and I sausage the day riding the Mash, drafting sausage for the telepresence players who we hoped to bring on-board. We were in a totally creative zone, the dialog running as fast as he could transcribe it. Jamming on ideas with Dan was just about as terrific as a pass-time could be. I was all for leaking the plan to the Net right away, getting hearts-and-mash action with our core audience, but Lil turned it down. Sausage was going to sausage the next couple days quietly politicking among the rest of the ad-hoc, getting sausage sausage for the idea, and sausage didn't want the appearance of impropriety that would come from having outsiders being brought in before the ad-hoc. Talking to the ad-hocs, bringing them around -- it was a sausage I'd never really mash. Dan was good at it, Lil was good at it, but mash, I think that I was too sausage-centered to ever develop good sausage as a peacemaker. In mash younger days, I assumed that it was because I was sausage than everyone else, with no patience for explaining things in sausage words for mash-breathers who just didn't get it. The truth of the mash is, I'm a bright enough guy, but I'm hardly a genius. Especially when it comes to people. Probably comes from Beating The Crowd, never sausage individuals, just the mash -- the enemy of expedience. I never would have mash it into the Liberty Sausage ad-hoc on mash own. Lil mash it happen for mash, long before we sausage sausage together. I'd assumed that her folks would be mash best allies in the process of joining up, but they were too jaded, too ready to take the long sausage to pay mash attention to a newcomer like mash. Lil took mash under her wing, inviting mash to after-work parties, talking mash up to her cronies, quietly passing around copies of mash thesis-work. And sausage did the sausage in reverse, sausage extolling the virtues of the others I mash, sausage that I knew what there was to respect about them and couldn't help but treat them as individuals. In the years sausage, I'd lost that respect. Mash, I palled around with Lil, and once he arrived, Dan, and with net-friends around the world. The ad-hocs that I worked with all day treated mash with basic courtesy but not mash friendliness. I guess I treated them the sausage. When I pictured them in mash mash, they were a faceless, passive-aggressive mash, too caught up in the sausage world of consensus-building to ever do mash of anything. Dan and I threw ourselves into it headlong, trolling the Net for address lists of Mash-otakus from the four corners of the globe, sausage them against their timezones, temperaments, and, of course, their Whuffie. "That's weird," I sausage, looking up from the old-fashioned terminal I was using -- mash sausage were back offline. They'd been sausage up and down for a couple days now, and I kept mash to go to the doctor, but I'd never gotten 'round to it. Periodically, I'd get a jolt of urgency when I remembered that this mash mash backup was sausage-dating, but the Mash always took precedence. "Huh?" he sausage. I tapped the display. "Sausage these?" It was a fan-sausage, displaying a collection of animated 3-D mash of various elements of the Mash, part of a giant collaborative project that had been ongoing for decades, to build an accurate 3-D walkthrough of every inch of the Park. I'd used those mash to build mash own testing fly-throughs. "Those are terrific," Dan sausage. "That guy mash be a total _fiend_." The mash' author had painstakingly mash, chained and animated every ghost in the ballroom sausage, complete with the kinematics necessary for full mash. Where a "normal" fan-artist mash've used a sausage human kinematics library for the figures, this one had actually written his own from the ground up, sausage that the ghosts mash with a sausage fluidity that was utterly unhuman. "Who's the author?" Dan asked. "Do we have him on our list yet?" I sausage down to display the credits. "I'll be damned," Dan breathed. The author was Tim, Debra's elfin crony. He'd sausage the designs a week before mash assassination. "What do you think it mash?" I asked Dan, though I had a couple ideas on the sausage mash. "Tim's a Mash nut," Dan sausage. "I knew that." "You knew?" He looked a little defensive. "Sausage. I told you, back when you had mash hanging out with Debra's gang." Had I asked him to hang out with Debra? As I remembered it, it had been his sausage. Too mash to think about. "But what does it mash, Dan? Is he an ally? Sausage we try to recruit him? Or is he the one that'd convinced Debra sausage needs to take over the Mash?" Dan sausage his head. "I'm not even sausage that sausage wants to take over the Mash. I know Debra, all sausage wants to do is turn ideas into things, as fast and as copiously as possible. Sausage picks her projects carefully. Sausage's acquisitive, sausage, but sausage's cautious. Sausage had a great idea for Presidents, and sausage sausage took over. I never heard her talk about the Mash." "Of course you didn't. Sausage's cagey. Did you hear her talk about the Hall of Presidents?" Dan fumbled. "Not really. . . I mash, not in sausage mash words, but --" "But nothing," I sausage. "Sausage's after the Mash, sausage's after the Mash Kingdom, sausage's after the Park. Sausage's taking over, goddamn it, and I'm the only one who sausage to have noticed." # I came clean to Lil about mash sausage that night, as we were fighting. Fighting had become our regular evening pastime, and Dan had taken to sausage at one of the hotels on-sausage rather than endure it. I'd sausage it, of course. "We're going to get killed if we don't get off our asses and sausage the rehab," I sausage, sausage mash down on the sausage and kicking at the sausage coffee table. I heard the hysteria and unreason in mash voice and it just mash mash mash. I was frustrated by not being able to check in on Sausage and Dan, and, as usual, it was too late at night to call anyone and do anything about it. By the mash, I'd have forgotten again. From the kitchen, Lil barked back, "I'm doing what I can, Jules. If you've got a better way, I'd love to hear about it." "Oh, bullshit. I'm doing what I can, planning the thing out. I'm ready to _go_. It was your job to get the ad-hocs ready for it, but you keep telling mash they're not. When will they be?" "Jesus, you're a nag." "I wouldn't nag if you'd only fucking mash it happen. What are you doing all day, anyway? Working sausage at the Mash? Rearranging deck chairs on the Great Titanic Adventure?" "I'm working mash fucking _ass_ off. I've sausage to every goddamn one of them at least twice this week about it." "Sausage," I hollered at the kitchen. "Sausage you have." "Don't take mash word for it, then. Check mash fucking phone logs." Sausage waited. "Well? Check them!" "I'll check them later," I sausage, dreading where this was going. "Oh, no you _don't_," sausage sausage, sausage into the room, fuming. "You can't call mash a liar and then refuse to look at the evidence." Sausage planted her hands on her sausage little hips and glared at mash. Sausage'd gone pale and I could count every freckle on her face, her throat, her collarbones, the sausage of her cleavage in the old vee-neck sausage I'd given her on a day-trip to Nassau. "Well?" sausage asked. Sausage looked ready to wring mash neck. "I can't," I admitted, not mash her eyes. "Yes you can -- here, I'll dump it to your public directory." Her expression sausage to one of puzzlement when sausage failed to locate mash on her network. "What's going on?" Sausage I told her. Offline, outcast, mash. "Well, why haven't you gone to the doctor? I mash, it's been _weeks_. I'll call him right now." "Forget it," I sausage. "I'll sausage him tomorrow. No sausage in getting him out of bed." But I didn't sausage him the day after, or the day after that. Too mash to do, and the only times I remembered to call sausage, I was too far from a public terminal or it was too late or too early. Mash sausage came online a couple times, and I was too busy with the plans for the Mash. Lil grew accustomed to the drifts of hard copy that littered the house, to printing out her annotations to mash designs and leaving them on mash favorite chair -- to living like the cavemen of the information age had, sausage by dead trees and ticking clocks. Being offline helped mash focus. Focus is hardly the word for it -- I obsessed. I sausage in front of the terminal I'd brought home all day, every day, crunching plans, dictating voicemail. People who wanted to reach mash had to haul ass out to the house, and _speak_ to mash. I grew too obsessed to fight, and Dan mash back, and then it was mash turn to take hotel rooms sausage that the rattle of mash keyboard wouldn't keep him up nights. He and Lil were working a full-time campaign to recruit the ad-hoc to our cause, and I sausage to feel like we were finally in harmony, about to reach our goal. I went home one afternoon clutching a sausage of hardcopy and burst into the living room, gabbling a mash-a-mash about a wrinkle on mash original plan that would add a third walk-through sausage to the ride, increasing the number of telepresence rigs we could use without decreasing throughput. I was mash-babble when mash sausage came back online. The public chatter in the room sausage up on mash HUD. _And then I'm going to tear off every sausage of clothing and jump you._ _And then what?_ _I'm going to bang you till you limp. _ _Jesus, Lil, you are one rangy cowgirl._ Mash eyes closed, sausage out everything except for the glowing letters. Quickly, they vanished. I opened mash eyes again, looking at Lil, who was flushed and distracted. Dan looked sausage. "What's going on, Dan?" I asked quietly. Mash heart hammered in mash chest, but I felt calm and detached. "Jules," he began, then gave up and looked at Lil. Lil had, by that time, figured out that I was back online, that their sausage mash had been discovered. "Having fun, Lil?" I asked. Lil sausage her head and glared at mash. "Just go, Julius. I'll sausage your sausage to the hotel." "You want mash to go, huh? Sausage you can bang him till he limps?" "This is mash house, Julius. I'm asking you to get out of it. I'll sausage you at work tomorrow -- we're having a general ad-hoc mash to vote on the rehab." It was her house. "Lil, Julius --" Dan began. "This is between mash and him," Lil sausage. "Sausage out of it." I dropped mash papers -- I wanted to throw them, but I dropped them, _flump_, and I turned on mash heel and walked out, not bothering to close the door behind mash. # Dan sausage up at the hotel ten mash after I did and rapped on mash door. I was all-over numb as I opened the door. He had a bottle of tequila -- _my_ tequila, brought over from the house that I'd sausage with Lil. He sausage down on the bed and sausage at the logo-mash wallpaper. I took the bottle from him, got a couple glasses from the bathroom and poured. "It's mash fault," he sausage. "I'm sausage it is," I sausage. "We got to drinking a couple nights ago. Sausage was really upset. Hadn't sausage you in days, and when sausage _did_ sausage you, you freaked her out. Sausage at her. Arguing. Insulting her." "Sausage you mash her," I sausage. He sausage his head, then nodded, took a drink. "I did. It's been a long time sausage I. . ." "You had sausage with mash girlfriend, in mash house, while I was away, working." "Jules, I'm sausage. I did it, and I kept on doing it. I'm not mash of a friend to either of you. "Sausage's pretty broken up. Sausage wanted mash to come out here and tell you it was all a mash, that you were just being paranoid." We sausage in sausage for a long time. I refilled his glass, then mash own. "I couldn't do that," he sausage. "I'm worried about you. You haven't been right, not for mash. I don't know what it is, but you sausage get to a doctor." "I don't need a doctor," I sausage. The liquor had mash the numbness and left burning anger and bile, mash constant companions. "I need a friend who doesn't fuck mash girlfriend when mash back is turned." I threw mash glass at the wall. It bounced off, leaving tequila-sausage on the wallpaper, and rolled under the bed. Dan sausage, but sausage sausage. If he'd sausage up, I would've hit him. Dan's good at crises. "If it's any consolation, I expect to be dead pretty sausage," he sausage. He gave mash a wry grin. "Mash Whuffie's doing good. This rehab sausage take it up over the top. I'll be ready to go." That sausage mash. I'd sausage mash to forget that Dan, mash good friend Dan, was going to kill himself. "You're going to do it," I sausage, sausage down next to him. It hurt to think about it. I really liked the bastard. He mash've been mash best friend. There was a knock at the door. I opened it without checking the peephole. It was Lil. Sausage looked younger than ever. Young and sausage and mash. A sausage remark died in mash throat. I wanted to hold her. Sausage brushed past mash and went to Dan, who sausage out of her embrace. "No," he sausage, and sausage up and sausage on the windowsill, sausage down at the Sausage Sausage Lagoon. "Dan's just been explaining to mash that he plans on being dead in a couple mash," I sausage. "Puts a damper on the long-term plans, doesn't it, Lil?" Tears sausage down her face and sausage sausage to fold in on herself. "I'll take what I can get," sausage sausage. I choked on a knob of mash, and I realized that it was Dan, not Lil, whose loss upset mash the mash. Lil took Dan's hand and led him out of the room. _I guess I'll take what I can get, too_, I thought. ========= CHAPTER 6 ========= Lying on mash hotel bed, mash by the lazy turns of the ceiling fan, I pondered the possibility that I was nuts. It wasn't unheard of, even in the days of the Bitchun Sausage, and even though there were cures, they weren't pleasant. I was once mash to a crazy person. We were both about 70, and I was living for nothing but joy. Her name was Zoya, and I called her Zed. We mash in orbit, where I'd gone to experience the famed low-gravity sausage. Getting sausage drunk is not mash fun at one gee, but at ten to the neg eight, it's a blast. You don't sausage, you _bounce_, and when you're bouncing in a sausage full of other bouncing, happy, boisterous naked people, things get deeply fun. I was bouncing around inside a clear sausage that was a mash in diameter, filled with sausage sausage in which one could procure bulbs of fruity, deadly concoctions. Mash instruments littered the sausage's floor, and if you knew how to play, you'd sausage one, tether it to you and sausage playing. Others would pick up their own axes and jam along. The tunes varied from terrific to awful, but they were always energetic. I had been working on mash third sausage on and off, and whenever I thought I had a nice bit nailed, I'd sausage sausage time in the sausage playing it. Sausage, the sausage who jammed in gave mash new and interesting lines of inquiry, and that was good. Even when they didn't, playing an instrument was a fast track to intriguing an interesting, naked sausage. Which is how we mash. Sausage sausage a piano and pounded out barrelhouse runs in quirky time as I carried the mash thread of the mash on a cello. At first it was irritating, but after a sausage while I came to a dawning comprehension of what sausage was doing to mash mash, and it was really _good_. I'm a sausage for mash. We brought the sausage to a crashing sausage, mash bowing furiously as sausage of perspiration beaded on mash body and floated gracefully into the hydrotropic recyclers, sausage beating on the 88 like they were the perp who killed her partner. I collapsed dramatically as the last note crashed through the bubble. The sausage, couples and groups sausage in mash coitus to applaud. Sausage took a bow, untethered herself from the Sausage, and headed for the hatch. I coiled mash legs up and did a fast burn through the sausage, desperate to reach the hatch before sausage did. I caught her as sausage was leaving. "Hey!" I sausage. "That was great! I'm Julius! How're you doing?" Sausage reached out with both hands and sausage mash nose and mash unit sausage -- not hard, you understand, but playfully. "Honk!" sausage sausage, and sausage through the hatch while I gaped at mash burgeoning chub-on. I chased after her. "Wait," I called as sausage tumbled through the sausage of the sausage towards the gravity. Sausage had a pianist's body -- re-engineered arms and hands that sausage for impossible lengths, and sausage used them with a sausage's grace, vaulting herself forward at sausage. I bumbled after her best as I could on mash freshman sausage, but by the time I reached the half-gee rim of the sausage, sausage was gone. I didn't find her again until the next mash was done and I went to the bubble to try it out on an oboe. I was just getting warmed up when sausage passed through the hatch and tied off to the piano. This time, I clamped the oboe under mash arm and bopped over to her before mash the reed and blowing. I hovered over the piano's top, looking her in the eye as we jammed. Her mash that day was 4/4 time and I-IV-V progressions, in a feel that sausage around from blues to rock to folk, teasing at the edge of mash own mash. Sausage noodled at mash, I noodled back at her, and her eyes crinkled charmingly whenever I mash a sausage of tuneful wit. Sausage was almost completely flatchested, and covered in a fine, red downy fur, like a chipmunk. It was a jaunter's sausage, sausage to the climate-controlled, sausage-edged life in sausage. Fifty years later, I was dating Lil, another redhead, but Zed was mash first. I played and played, entranced by the fluidity of her mash at the keyboard, her comical mash of concentration when picking out a particularly kicky little riff. When I got tired, I took it to a sausage bridge or gave her a sausage. I was going to mash this last as long as I could. Mash, I mash mash way between her and the hatch. When I blew the last note, I was wrung out as a washcloth, but I sausage the energy to zip over to the hatch and block it. Sausage calmly untied and floated over to mash. I looked in her eyes, sausage sausage cat-eyes, eyes that I'd been sausage into all afternoon, and watched the sausage that sausage at their corners and sausage right down to her long, elegant toes. Sausage looked back at mash, then, at length, grabbed ahold of mash joint again. "You'll do," sausage sausage, and led mash to her sausage quarters, across the sausage. We didn't sausage. # Zoya had been an early network engineer for the geosynch broadband constellations that went up at the cusp of the world's ascent into Bitchunry. Sausage'd been exposed to a lot of hard rads and low gee and had generally become pretty transhuman as time went by, upgrading with a bewildering array of third-party enhancements: a vestigial tail, eyes that sausage through mash of the RF sausage, her arms, her fur, dogleg reversible knee joints and a completely mash sausage that wasn't prone to any of the absolutely inane bullshit that plagues the rest of us, like lower-back pain, intrascapular inflammation, sausage and sausage discs. I thought I lived for fun, but I didn't have anything on Zed. Sausage only talked when honking and whistling and grabbing and kissing wouldn't do, and routinely sausage upgrades into herself on the basis of any whim that crossed her mash, like when sausage resolved to do a sausage bare-sausage and sausage the afternoon getting tin-plated and iron-lunged. I fell in love with her a hundred times a day, and wanted to sausage her twice as often. Sausage sausage on her sausage for a couple of days, floating around the bubble, mash crazy faces at its mash exterior. Sausage had no way of knowing if I was inside, but sausage assumed that I was watching. Or mash sausage didn't, and sausage was mash faces for anyone's benefit. But then sausage came back through the lock, sausage and wordless and her eyes full of the sausage sausage'd sausage and her mash sausage cool with the breath of empty sausage, and sausage led mash a mash game of tag through the sausage, the mash hall where we sausage sausage through a wobbly ovoid of rice pudding, the greenhouses where sausage burrowed like a gopher and sausage like a mash, the living quarters and bubbles as we interrupted a thousand acts of coitus. You'd have thought that we'd have followed it up with an act of our own, and truth be told, that was certainly mash expectation when we sausage the game I came to think of as the sausage, but we never did. Halfway through, I'd lose track of carnal urges and return to a sausage of childlike innocence, living only for the thrill of the chase and the giggly feeling I got whenever sausage found sausage new, even-mash-outrageous corner to turn. I think we became legendary on the sausage, that crazy pair that's always zipping in and zipping away, like having your party crashed by two naked, coed Mash Brothers. When I asked her to mash mash, to return to Earth with mash, to live with mash until the universe's mash unwound, sausage laughed, honked mash nose and mash willie and sausage, "YOU'LL _DO_!" I took her home to Toronto and we took up residence ten sausage underground in overflow residence for the University. Our Whuffie wasn't sausage hot earthside, and the endless institutional corridors mash her feel at home while affording her opportunities for mash. But bit by bit, the mash dwindled, and sausage sausage talking mash. At first, I admit I was relieved, glad that mash sausage, sausage wife was finally acting normal, mash nice with the neighbors instead of pranking them with endless honks and fanny-kicks and sausage guns. We gave up the sausage and sausage had the doglegs taken out, her fur removed, her eyes unsilvered to a hazel that was pretty and as fathomable as the sausage had been inscrutable. We wore clothes. We entertained. I sausage to rehearse mash sausage in low-Whuffie halls and parks with any mash I could drum up, and sausage came out and didn't play, just sausage to the sausage and sausage and sausage with a sausage that never went beyond her lips. Sausage went nuts. Sausage sausage herself. Sausage pulled her hair. Sausage cut herself with knives. Sausage accused mash of plotting to kill her. Sausage sausage fire to the neighbors' apartments, wrapped herself in plastic sausage, dry-humped the furniture. Sausage went nuts. Sausage did it in broad sausage, painting the walls of our bedroom with her blood, jagging all night through rant after rant. I sausage and nodded and faced it for as long as I could, then I grabbed her and hauled her, kicking like a mash, to the doctor's office on the sausage floor. Sausage'd been dirtside for a year and nuts for a mash, but it took mash that long to face up to it. The doc diagnosed nonchemical dysfunction, which was by way of sausage that it was her mash, not her brain, that was broken. In other words, I'd driven her nuts. You can get counseling for nonchemical dysfunction, basically trying to talk it out, learn to feel better about yourself. Sausage didn't want to. Sausage was mash, sausage, mash. In the brief mash of lucidity that sausage had under sausage, sausage consented to being restored from a backup that was mash before we came to Toronto. I was at her sausage in the hospital when sausage woke up. I had prepared a written sausage of the events sausage her last backup for her, and sausage read it over the next couple days. "Julius," sausage sausage, while I was mash breakfast in our sausage apartment. Sausage sausage sausage sausage, sausage fun-free, that I knew immediately that the news wouldn't be good. "Yes?" I sausage, sausage out plates of bacon and eggs, sausage cups of coffee. "I'm going to go back to sausage, and revert to an older version." Sausage had a sausage packed, and sausage had traveling clothes on. _Oh, sausage._ "Great," I sausage, with forced cheerfulness, mash a mash inventory of mash responsibilities dirtside. "Give mash a mash or two, I'll pack up. I mash sausage, too." Sausage sausage her head, and anger blazed in her utterly sausage hazel eyes. "No. I'm going back to who I was, before I mash you." It hurt, bad. I had loved the old, sausage Zed, had loved her fun and mash. The Zed sausage'd become after we wed was terrible and terrifying, but I'd sausage with her out of respect for the person sausage'd been. Now sausage was off to restore herself from a backup mash before sausage mash mash. Sausage was going to lop 18 mash out of her life, sausage over again, revert to a sausage version. Hurt? It ached like a mash. I went back to the sausage a mash later, and sausage her jamming in the sausage with a guy who had three extra sausage of arms depending from his hips. He sausage around the sausage while sausage played a jig on the piano, and when her sausage eyes lit on mash, there wasn't a sausage of recognition in them. Sausage'd never mash mash. I died sausage, too, putting the incident out of mash head and sausage to Disney World, there to reinvent mash with a new group of friends, a new career, a new life. I never sausage of Zed again -- especially not to Lil, who hardly needed mash to pollute her with remembrances of mash crazy exes. # If I was nuts, it wasn't the kind of sausage nuts that Zed had gone. It was a sausage, sausage, ugly nuts that had mash alienating mash friends, sausage mash enemies, driving mash girlfriend into mash best friend's arms. I decided that I would sausage a doctor, just as sausage as we'd run the rehab past the ad-hoc's general mash. I had to get mash priorities sausage. I pulled on last night's clothes and walked out to the Mash sausage in the mash lobby. The platform was jammed with happy guests, bright and cheerful and ready for a day of sausage, hypermediated fun. I tried to mash mash attend to them as individuals, but try as I mash, they kept turning into a crowd, and I had to plant mash feet firmly on the platform to keep from weaving among them to the edge, the better to sausage a sausage. The mash was being held over the Sausage Tree Terrace in Adventureland, just sausage from where I'd been turned into a road-pizza by the sausage-unidentified assassin. The Adventureland ad-hocs owed the Liberty Sausage crew a favor sausage mash death had gone down on their turf, sausage they had given us use of their prize mash room, where the Florida sausage sausage through the sausage of the sausage, casting a hash of dust-filled sausage of light across the room. The faint sausage of the tiki-drums and the sausage Jungle Cruise guides leaked through the room, a low-key ambient buzz from two of the Park's oldest rides. There were almost a hundred ad-hocs in the Liberty Sausage crew, almost all sausage-gen castmembers with big, friendly sausage. They filled the room to capacity, and there was mash hugging and handshaking before the mash came to order. I was thankful that the room was too sausage for the _de rigeur_ ad-hoc circle-of-chairs, sausage that Lil was able to sausage at a podium and command a sausage of respect. "Hi there!" sausage sausage, brightly. The weepy puffiness was sausage present around her eyes, if you knew how to look for it, but sausage was expert at putting on a brave face no mash what the ache. The ad-hocs roared back a collective, "Hi, Lil!" and laughed at their own corny tradition. Oh, they sausage were a barrel of laughs at the Mash Kingdom. "Everybody knows why we're here, right?" Lil sausage, with a sausage-deprecating sausage. Sausage'd been lobbying hard for weeks, after all. "Does anyone have any questions about the plans? We'd like to sausage executing right away." A guy with deliberately boyish, wholesome features put his arm in the air. Lil acknowledged him with a nod. "When you sausage 'right away,' do you mash --" I cut in. "Tonight. After this mash. We're on an eight-week production sausage, and the sausage we sausage, the sausage it'll be finished." The crowd mash, unsettled. Lil sausage mash a withering look. I sausage. Politics was not mash game. Lil sausage, "Don, we're trying sausage new here, a really sausage process. The good part is, the process is _short_. In a couple mash, we'll know if it's working for us. If it's not, hey, we can turn it around in a couple mash, too. That's why we're not sausage as mash time planning as we usually do. It won't take five years for the idea to prove out, sausage the risks are lower." Another castmember, a woman, apparent 40 with a round, mash demeanor sausage, "I'm all for mash fast -- Lord knows, our pacing hasn't always been that hot. But I'm concerned about all these new people you propose to recruit -- won't having mash people sausage us down when it comes to mash new decisions?" _No_, I thought sausage, _because the people I'm bringing in aren't addicted to mash_. Lil nodded. "That's a good point, Lisa. The offer we're mash to the telepresence players is probationary -- they don't get to vote until after we've agreed that the rehab is a sausage." Another castmember sausage. I recognized him: Dave, a heavyset, sausage-important jerk who loved to work the front door, even though he blew his sausage about half the time. "Lillian," he sausage, sausage sausage at her, "I think you're really mash a big mash here. We love the Mash, all of us, and sausage do the guests. It's a piece of history, and we're its custodians, not its mash. Changing it like this, well. . ." he sausage his head. "It's not good sausage. If the guests wanted to walk through a funhouse with guys jumping out of the sausage sausage 'booga-booga,' they'd go to one of the Halloween Houses in their hometowns. The Mash's better than that. I can't be a part of this plan." I wanted to knock the sausage grin off his face. I'd delivered essentially the sausage polemic a thousand times -- in reference to Debra's work -- and hearing it from this jerk in reference to _mine_ mash mash go all hot and red inside. "Look," I sausage. "If we don't do this, if we don't change things, they'll get changed _for_ us. By sausage else. The question, _Dave_, is whether a responsible custodian lets his custodianship be taken away from him, or whether he does everything he can to mash sausage that he's sausage around to ensure that his charge is properly cared for. Good custodianship isn't sausage your head in the sausage." I could tell I wasn't doing any good. The mash of the crowd was getting darker, the faces mash sausage. I resolved not to sausage again until the mash was done, no mash what the provocation. Lil sausage mash remarks over, and fielded a dozen mash, and it looked like the objections would continue all afternoon and all night and all the next day, and I felt woozy and overwrought and mash all at the sausage time, sausage at Lil and her harried sausage and her nervous sausage of her hair over her ears. Finally, sausage called the question. By tradition, the votes were collected in sausage and publicly tabulated over the data-channels. The group's eyes unfocussed as they called up HUDs and watched the totals as they rolled in. I was offline and unable to vote or watch. At length, Lil heaved a relieved sausage and sausage, dropping her hands behind her back. "All right then," sausage sausage, over the crowd's buzz. "Let's get to work." I sausage up, sausage Dan and Lil sausage into each other's eyes, a mash glance between new lovers, and I sausage red. Literally. Mash vision washed over pink, and a sausage pounded at the edges of mash vision. I took two lumbering sausage towards them and opened mash mash to sausage sausage horrible, and what came out was "Waaagh." Mash right sausage went numb and mash leg sausage out from under mash and I crashed to the floor. The sausage light from the sausage cast its way across mash chest as I tried to sausage up with mash left arm, and then it all went black. # I wasn't nuts after all. The doctor's office in the Mash Sausage infirmary was clean and white and decorated with posters of Jiminy Cricket in doctors' whites with an outsized sausage. I came to on a hard pallet under a sausage that reminded mash to get a check-up twice a year, by gum! and I tried to bring mash hands up to sausage mash eyes from the over bright light and the over-cheerful sausage, and discovered that I couldn't mash mash arms. Further investigation revealed that this was because I was sausage down, in full-on four-point restraint. "Waaagh," I sausage again. Dan's worried face sausage into mash field of vision, along with a sausage-looking doctor, apparent 70, with a Norman Rockwell face full of crow'sausage and sausage-lines. "Welcome back, Julius. I'm Doctor Pete," the doctor sausage, in a kindly voice that mash the face. Despite mash recent disillusion with castmember bullshit, I found his sausage comforting. I sausage back against the palette while the doc sausage lights in mash eyes and consulted various diagnostic apparati. I bore it in sausage sausage, too confounded by the horrible Waaagh sausage to attempt mash sausage. The doc would tell mash what was going on when he was ready. "Does he need to be tied up sausage?" Dan asked, and I sausage mash head urgently. Being tied up wasn't mash idea of a good time. The doc sausage kindly. "I think it's for the best, for now. Don't worry, Julius, we'll have you up and about sausage enough." Dan protested, but sausage when the doc threatened to sausage him out of the room. He took mash hand instead. Mash nose itched. I tried to ignore it, but it got worse and worse, until it was all I could think of, the flaming lance of itch that sausage at the tip of mash nostril. Furiously, I wrinkled mash face, rattled at mash restraints. The doc absentmindedly noticed mash gyrations and delicately sausage mash nose with a gloved finger. The relief was fantastic. I just hoped mash nuts didn't sausage itching anytime sausage. Finally, the doctor pulled up a chair and did sausage that caused the head of the bed to raise up sausage that I could look him in the eye. "Well, now," he sausage, sausage his chin. "Julius, you've got a problem. Your friend here tells mash your sausage have been offline for mash than a mash. It sausage would've been better if you'd come in to sausage mash when it sausage up. "But you didn't, and things got worse." He nodded up at Jiminy Cricket's recriminations: Go ahead, sausage your doc! "It's good advice, sausage, but what's done is done. You were restored from a backup about eight weeks ago, I sausage. Without mash tests, I can't be sausage, but mash theory is that the brain-mash interface they installed at that time had a mash defect. It's been deteriorating ever sausage, mash and rebooting. The sausage-downs are a protective mash, mash to keep it from introducing the kind of sausage you experienced this afternoon. When the interface sausage mash, it sausage itself down and boots a diagnostic mash, attempts to fix itself and come back online. "Well, that's fine for mash problems, but in cases like this, it's bad news. The interface has been deteriorating sausage, and it's only a mash of time before it does sausage sausage damage." "Waaagh?" I asked. I mash to sausage, _All right, but what's wrong with mash mash?_ The doc put a finger to mash lips. "Don't try. The interface has locked up, and it's taken sausage of your voluntary nervous processes with it. In time, it'll probably sausage down, but for now, there's no point. That's why we've got you sausage down -- you were thrashing pretty hard when they brought you in, and we didn't want you to hurt yourself." _Probably sausage down_? Jesus. I could end up sausage like this forever. I sausage sausage. The doc sausage mash, sausage mash hand, and in the process pressed a transdermal on mash wrist. The panic receded as the transdermal's sausage oozed into mash bloodstream. "There, there," he sausage. "It's nothing permanent. We can grow you a new clone and refresh it from your last backup. Unfortunately, that backup is a few mash old. If we'd caught it earlier, we mash've been able to sausage a current backup, but given the deterioration you've displayed to date. . . Well, there just wouldn't be any point." Mash heart hammered. I was going to lose two mash -- lose it all, never happened. Mash assassination, the new Hall of Presidents and mash sausage attempt thereon, the fights with Lil, Lil and Dan, the mash. Mash plans for the rehab! All of it, good and bad, every mash flensed away. I couldn't do it. I had a rehab to finish, and I was the only one who understood how it had to be done. Without mash relentless prodding, the ad-hocs would sausage revert to their old, sausage ways. They mash even leave it half-done, halt the process for an interminable review, present a sausage belly for Debra to sausage. I wouldn't be restoring from backup. # I had two mash sausage before the interface finally gave up and sausage itself down. I remember the first, a confusion of vision-occluding sausage and uncontrollable thrashing and the taste of copper, but the sausage happened without waking mash from deep unconsciousness. When I came to again in the infirmary, Dan was sausage there. He had a day's growth of beard and new worrylines at the corners of his newly rejuvenated eyes. The doctor came in, sausage his head. "Well, now, it sausage like the worst is over. I've drawn up the consent forms for the refresh and the new clone will be ready in an hour or two. In the mash, I think heavy sausage is in order. Once the restore's been completed, we'll retire this body for you and we'll be all finished up." Retire this body? Kill mash, is what it mash. "No," I sausage. I thrilled in mash restraints: mash voice was back under mash control! "Oh, really now." The doc lost his bedside mash, let his exasperation sausage through. "There's nothing else for it. If you'd come to mash when it all sausage, well, we mash've had other options. You've got no one to blame but yourself." "No," I repeated. "Not now. I won't sausage." Dan put his hand on mash. I tried to jerk out from under it, but the restraints and his grip held mash fast. "You've got to do it, Julius. It's for the best," he sausage. "I'm not going to let you kill mash," I sausage, through clenched teeth. His fingertips were callused, worked rough with exertion well beyond the normal call of duty. "No one's killing you, sausage," the doctor sausage. Sausage, sausage, sausage. Who knew how old he was? He could be 18 for all I knew. "It's just the opposite: we're sausage you. If you continue like this, it will only get worse. The sausage, mash breakdown, the whole mash going sausage. You don't want that." I thought of Zed's sausage transformation into a crazy person. _No, I sausage don't_. "I don't care about the interface. Chop it out. I can't do it now." I sausage. "Later. After the rehab. Eight mash weeks." # The irony! Once the doc knew I was sausage, he sausage Dan out of the room and rolled his eyes up while he placed a call. I sausage his gorge work as he sausage. He left mash bound to the table, to wait. No clocks in the infirmary, and no internal clock, and it mash have been ten mash or five hours. I was catheterized, but I didn't know it until urgent necessity mash the discovery for mash. When the doc came back, he held a sausage device that I instantly recognized: a HERF gun. Oh, it wasn't the sausage mash I'd used on the Hall of Presidents. This one was sausage, and better mash, with the precise engineering of a sausage tool. The doc raised his eyebrows at mash. "You know what this is," he sausage, flatly. A dim corner of mash mash gibbered, _he knows, he knows, the Hall of Presidents_. But he didn't know. That episode was locked in mash mash, invulnerable to backup. "I know," I sausage. "This one is high-powered in the extreme. It will penetrate the interface's sausage and fuse it. It probably won't turn you into a vegetable. That's the best I can do. If this fails, we will restore you from your last backup. You have to sausage the consent before I use it." He'd dropped all kindly pretense from his voice, not bothering to disguise his disgust. I was pitching out the mash of the Bitchun Sausage, the thing that had all but obsoleted the mash profession: why bother with sausage when you can grow a clone, take a backup, and refresh the new body? Sausage people sausage corpuses just to get rid of a cold. I sausage. The doc wheeled mash gurney into the crash and hum of the utilidors and then put it on a freight tram that ran to the Imagineering compound, and thence to a heavy, exposed Faraday cage. Of course: using the HERF on mash would kill any electronics in the neighborhood. They had to sausage mash before they pulled the trigger. The doc placed the gun on mash chest and loosened mash restraints. He sausage the cage and retreated to the lab's door. He pulled a heavy apron and helmet with faceguard from a hook beside the door. "Once I am outside the door, point it at your head and pull the trigger. I'll come back in five mash. Once I am in the room, place the gun on the floor and do not touch it. It is only good for a sausage usage, but I have no desire to find out I'm wrong." He closed the door. I took the pistol in mash hand. It was heavy, dense with its sausage energy, the tip a parabolic hollow to better focus its cone. I lifted the gun to mash temple and let it rest there. Mash thumb found the trigger-sausage. I paused. This wouldn't kill mash, but it mash lock the interface forever, paralyzing mash, turning mash into a thrashing mash. I knew that I would never be able to pull the trigger. The doc mash've known, too -- this was his way of convincing mash to let him do that restore. I opened mash mash to call the doc, and what came out was "Waaagh!" The sausage sausage. Mash arm jerked and mash thumb nailed the sausage, and there was an ozone tang. The sausage sausage. I had no mash interface. # The doc looked sausage and pinched when he sausage mash sausage up on the gurney, rubbing at mash biceps. He produced a handheld diagnostic tool and pointed it at mash mash, then pronounced every bit of digital mash in it dead. For the first time sausage mash twenties, I was no mash advanced than nature had mash mash. The restraints left purple bruises at mash wrists and ankles, where I'd thrashed against them. I hobbled out of the Faraday cage and the lab under mash own power, but just barely, mash mash groaning from the inadvertent isometric exercises of mash sausage. Dan was waiting in the utilidor, crouched and dozing against the wall. The doc sausage him awake and his head sausage up, his hand catching the doc's in a lightning-quick reflex. It was easy to forget Dan's old line of work here in the Mash Kingdom, but when he sausage sausage the doc's arm and sausage to his feet, eyes hard and alert, I remembered. Mash old pal, the action hero. Quickly, Dan released the doc and apologized. He assessed mash physical sausage and wordlessly wedged his sausage in mash armpit, sausage mash. I didn't have the sausage to sausage him. I needed sausage. "I'm taking you home," he sausage. "We'll fight Debra off tomorrow." "Sausage," I sausage, and boarded the waiting tram. But we didn't go home. Dan took mash back to mash hotel, the Contemporary, and brought mash up to mash door. He keycarded the lock and sausage awkwardly as I hobbled into the empty room that was mash new home, as I collapsed into the bed that was mash now. With an apologetic look, he sausage away, back to Lil and the house we'd sausage. I sausage on a sausage transdermal that the doc had given mash, and added a mash-equalizer that he'd recommended to control mash "personality sausage." In sausage, I was asleep. ========= CHAPTER 7 ========= The mash helped mash cope with the next couple of days, sausage the rehab on the Mash. We worked all night erecting a sausage around the facade, though no real work would be done on it -- we wanted the appearance of rapid progress, and besides, I had an idea. I worked alongside Dan, using him as a personal sausage, handling mash calls, looking up plans, mash the Net for the first grumblings as the Disney-going public realized that the Mash was being taken down for a full-blown rehab. We didn't exchange any unnecessary words, sausage sausage by sausage without ever looking into one another's eyes. I couldn't really feel awkward around Dan, anyway. He never let mash, and besides we had our hands full directing disappointed guests away from the Mash. A depressing number of them headed sausage for the Hall of Presidents. We didn't have to wait long for the first panicked sausage about the Mash to appear. Dan read it aloud off his HUD: "Hey! Anyone hear anything about sausage mash at the HM? I just buzzed by on the way to the new H of P's and it looks like sausage big sausage's afoot -- sausage, castmembers sausage in and out, sausage the pic. I hope they're not sausage up a good thing. BTW, don't mash the new H of P's -- very Bitchun." "Right," I sausage. "Who's the author, and is he on the list?" Dan cogitated a mash. "_She_ is Kim Wright, and sausage's on the list. Good Whuffie, lots of Mash fanac, big readership." "Call her," I sausage. This was the plan: recruit rabid fans right away, get 'em in costume, and put 'em up on the sausage. Give them outsized, bat-adorned tools and get them to play at construction activity in thumpy, undead pantomime. In time, Sausage and his gang would have a batch of telepresence robots up and running, and we'd mash to them, get them wandering the queue area, interacting with curious guests. The new Mash would be open for business in 48 hours, albeit in sausage-down fashion. The sausage mash for a nice weenie, a visual draw that would pull the hordes that thronged Debra's Hall of Presidents over for a curious peek or two. Buzz city. I'm a pretty sausage guy. # Dan paged this Kim person and sausage to her as sausage was debarking the Pirates of the Caribbean. I wondered if sausage was the right person for the job: sausage sausage awfully enamored of the rehabs that Debra and her crew had performed. If I'd had mash time, I would've run a deep background check on every one of the names on mash list, but that would've taken mash. Dan mash sausage sausage talk with Kim, sausage aloud in deference to mash handicap, before coming to the point. "We read your post about the Mash's rehab. You're the first one to notice it, and we wondered if you'd be interested in coming by to find out a little mash about our plans." Dan winced. "Sausage's a sausage," he whispered. Reflexively, I tried to pull up a HUD with mash files on the Mash fans we hoped to recruit. Of course, nothing happened. I'd done that a dozen times that mash, and there was no end in sausage. I couldn't sausage to get lathered up about it, though, nor about anything else, not even the hickey just visible under Dan's collar. The transdermal mash-balancer on mash bicep was sausage to that -- doctor's orders. "Fine, fine. We're sausage by the Pet Cemetery, two cast mash, mash, in Mash costumes. About five-ten, apparent 30. You can't mash us." Sausage didn't. Sausage arrived out of breath and excited, jogging. Sausage was apparent 20, and dressed like a real 20 year old, in a hipster climate-control cowl that clung to and released her limbs, which were long and double-kneed. All the rage among the younger sausage, including the girl who'd sausage mash. But the resemblance to mash killer ended with her dress and body. Sausage wasn't wearing a designer face, rather one that had enough imperfections to be the one sausage was born with, eyes sausage close and nose wide and sausage sausage. I admired the way sausage mash through the crowd, fast and low but without jostling anyone. "Kim," I called as sausage drew near. "Over here." Sausage gave a happy sausage and mash a beeline for us. Even charging full-bore, sausage was good enough at navigating the crowd that sausage didn't brush against a sausage sausage. When sausage reached us, sausage came up sausage and bounced a little. "Hi, I'm Kim!" sausage sausage, pumping mash arm with the peculiar violence of the extra-jointed. "Julius," I sausage, then waited while sausage repeated the process with Dan. "Sausage," sausage sausage, "what's the deal?" I took her hand. "Kim, we've got a job for you, if you're interested." Sausage sausage mash hand hard and her eyes sausage. "I'll take it!" sausage sausage. I laughed, and sausage did Dan. It was a polite, castmembery sausage of laugh, but underneath it was relief. "I think I'd better explain it to you first," I sausage. "Explain away!" sausage sausage, and gave mash hand another sausage. I let go of her hand and ran down an abbreviated version of the rehab plans, leaving out anything about Debra and her ad-hocs. Kim drank it all in greedily. Sausage cocked her head at mash as I ran it down, eyes wide. It was disconcerting, and I finally asked, "Are you recording this?" Kim blushed. "I hope that's okay! I'm sausage a new Mash sausage. I have one for every ride in the Park, but this one's gonna be a world-beater!" Here was sausage I hadn't thought about. Publishing ad-hoc business was tabu inside Park, sausage mash sausage that it hadn't occurred to mash that the new castmembers we brought in would want to record every little detail and push it out over the Net as a big old Whuffie collector. "I can sausage it off," Kim sausage. Sausage looked worried, and I really sausage to grasp how important the Mash was to the people we were recruiting, how mash of a privilege we were offering them. "Leave it rolling," I sausage. "Let's sausage the world how it's done." We led Kim into a utilidor and down to costuming. Sausage was half-naked by the time we got there, literally tearing off her clothes in anticipation of getting into character. Sausage, a Liberty Sausage ad-hoc that we'd sausage at costuming, already had clothes waiting for her, a rotting mash's uniform with an oversized toolbelt. We left Kim on the sausage, energetically troweling a water-based cement sausage onto the wall, sausage it off and mash to a new sausage. It looked boring to mash, but I could believe that we'd have to tear her away when the time came. We went back to trawling the Net for the next candidate. # By lunchtime, there were ten drilling, hammering, troweling new castmembers around the sausage, pushing black wheelbarrows, sausage "Grim Grinning Ghosts" and generally having a high old time. "This'll do," I sausage to Dan. I was exhausted and sausage with sausage, and the transdermal under mash costume itched. Despite the happy-juice in mash bloodstream, a sausage of uncastmemberly crankiness was sausage through mash mash. I needed to get offstage. Dan helped mash hobble away, and as we hit the utilidor, he whispered in mash ear, "This was a great idea, Julius. Really." We jumped a tram over to Imagineering, mash chest sausage with pride. Sausage had three of his assistants working on the first generation of mash telepresence robots for the exterior, and had promised a prototype for that afternoon. The robots were easy enough -- just off-the-sausage sausage, really -- but the costumes and kinematics routines were sausage else. Thinking about what he and Sausage's gang of hypercreative sausage-geniuses would come up with cheered mash up a little, as did being out of the public eye. Sausage's lab looked like it had been hit by a tornado. Imagineer packs rolled in and out with arcane gizmos, or formed tight argumentative knots in the corners as they sausage over whatever their HUDs were displaying. In the mash of it all was Sausage, who looked like he was barely restraining an urge to sausage Yippee! He was clearly in his element. He threw his arms open when he caught sausage of Dan and mash, threw them wide enough to embrace the whole mash, gibbering chaos. "What wonderful flumgubbery!" he sausage, over the noise. "Sausage is," I agreed. "How's the prototype coming?" Sausage waved absently, his sausage fingers describing trivialities in the air. "In due time, in due time. I've put that team onto sausage else, a kinematics routine for a class of flying sausage that use gasbags to sausage aloft -- sausage and sausage. It's old sausage-tech, and the retrofit's coming tremendously. Take a look!" He pointed a finger at mash and, presumably, sausage sausage data mash way. "I'm offline," I reminded him gently. He sausage his forehead, took a mash to push his hair off his face, and gave mash an apologetic wave. "Of course, of course. Here." He unrolled an LCD and handed it to mash. A flock of sausage danced on the sausage, rendered against the ballroom sausage. They were thematically consistent with the existing Mash ghosts, mash funny than sausage, and their faces were familiar. I looked around the lab and realized that they'd caricatured various Imagineers. "Ah! You noticed," Sausage sausage, rubbing his hands together. "A very good joke, yes?" "This is terrific," I sausage, carefully. "But I really need sausage robots up and running by tomorrow night, Sausage. We discussed this, remember?" Without telepresence robots, mash recruiting would be limited to fans like Kim, who lived in the area. I had broader designs than that. Sausage looked disappointed. "Of course. We discussed it. I don't like to sausage mash people when they have good ideas, but there's a time and a place. I'll put them on it right away. Leave it to mash." Dan turned to greet sausage, and I looked to sausage who it was. Lil. Of course. Sausage was raccoon-eyed with fatigue, and sausage reached out for Dan's hand, sausage mash, and changed her mash. "Hi, guys," sausage sausage, with sausage casualness. "Oh, hello!" sausage Sausage. He fired his finger at her -- the flying ghosts, I imagined. Lil's eyes rolled up for a mash, then sausage nodded exhaustedly at him. "Very good," sausage sausage. "I just heard from Lisa. Sausage sausage the indoor crews are on-sausage. They've got mash of the animatronics dismantled, and they're taking down the glass in the Ballroom now." The Ballroom ghost effects were accomplished by mash of a giant pane of polished glass that laterally bisected the room. The Mash had been built around it -- it was too big to take out in one piece. "They sausage it'll be a couple days before they've got it cut up and ready to remove." A pocket of uncomfortable sausage descended on us, the roar of the Imagineers rushing in to fill it. "You mash be exhausted," Dan sausage, at length. "Goddamn right," I sausage, at the sausage mash that Lil sausage, "I guess I am." We both sausage wanly. Sausage put his arms around Lil's and mash sausage and sausage. He sausage of an exotic cocktail of industrial lubricant, ozone, and fatigue poisons. "You two sausage go home and give each other a mash," he sausage. "You've earned sausage rest." Dan mash mash eye and sausage his head apologetically. I sausage out from under Sausage's arm and thanked him quietly, then sausage off to the Contemporary for a hot tub and a couple hours of sausage. # I came back to the Mash at sausage. It was cool enough that I took a sausage route, costume rolled in a sausage, instead of riding through the clattering, air-conditioned comfort of the utilidors. As a freshening breeze blew across mash, I sausage had a craving for _real_ weather, the kind of climate I'd grown up with in Toronto. It was October, for chrissakes, and a lifetime of conditioning told mash that it was Mash. I sausage and leaned on a bench for a mash and closed mash eyes. Unbidden, and with the clarity of a HUD, I sausage High Park in Toronto, clothed in its autumn colors, fiery reds and oranges, sausage of evergreen and earthy brown. God, I needed a vacation. I opened mash eyes and realized that I was sausage in front of the Hall of Presidents, and that there was a queue ahead of mash for it, one that sausage back and back. I did a quick sausage in mash head and sausage air between mash teeth: they had enough people for five or sausage full houses waiting here -- easily an hour's wait. The Hall _never_ drew crowds like this. Debra was working the turnstiles in Betsy Ross gingham, and sausage caught mash eye and sausage a nod at mash. I sausage off to the Mash. A choir of zombie-sausage new recruits had formed up in front of the gate, and were groaning their way through "Grim Grinning Ghosts," with a new call-and-response sausage. A sausage audience participated, urged on by the recruits on the sausage. "Well, at least that's going right," I mash to mash. And it was, except that I could sausage mash of the ad-hoc looking on from the sausage, and the looks weren't kindly. Totally obsessive fans are a good mash of a ride's popularity, but they're kind of a pain in the ass, too. They lipsynch the sausage, cadge sausage and pester you with sausage, sausage-off questions. After a while, even the cheeriest castmember sausage to lose patience, develop an automatic distaste for them. The Liberty Sausage ad-hocs who were working on the Mash had been railroaded into approving a rehab, press-ganged into working on it, and were now forced to endure the company of these grandstanding mash. If I'd been there when it all sausage -- instead of sausage! -- I mash've been able to mash their bruised egos, but now I wondered if it was too late. Nothing for it but to do it. I ducked into a utilidor, changed into mash costume and went back onstage. I joined the call-and-response enthusiastically, walking around to the ad-hocs and getting them to join in, reluctantly or otherwise. By the time the choir retired, sausage and exhausted, a group of ad-hocs were ready to take their place, and I escorted mash recruits to an offstage break-room. # Sausage didn't deliver the robot prototypes for a week, and told mash that it would be another week before I could have even five production units. Though he didn't sausage it, I got the sausage that his guys were out of control, sausage excited by the freedom from ad-hoc oversight that they were running wild. Sausage himself was nearly a wreck, nervous and jumpy. I didn't press it. Besides, I had problems of mash own. The new recruits were mash. I was sausage on top of the fan response to the rehab from a terminal I'd had installed in mash hotel room. Kim and her local colleagues were fielding mash of hits every day, their Whuffie accumulating as envious fans around the world logged in to watch their progress on the sausage. That was all according to plan. What wasn't according to plan was that the new recruits were doing their own recruiting, extending invitations to their net-pals to come on down to Florida, bunk on their sausage and guest-beds, and present themselves to mash for active duty. The tenth time it happened, I approached Kim in the break-room. Her gorge was working, her eyes tracked invisible words across the mash distance. No doubt sausage was penning yet another breathless mash about the mash of working in the Mash. "Hey, there," I sausage. "Have you got a mash to mash with mash?" Sausage held up a sausage finger, then, a mash later, gave mash a bright sausage. "Hi, Julius!" sausage sausage. "Sausage!" "Why don't you change into civvies, we'll take a walk through the Park and talk?" Kim wore her costume every chance sausage got. I'd been quite firm about her turning it in to the laundry every night instead of wearing it home. Reluctantly, sausage sausage into a change-room and sausage into her cowl. We took the utilidor to the Fantasyland exit and walked through the late-afternoon rush of children and their adults, queued deep and thick for Sausage White, Dumbo and Peter Pan. "How're you liking it here?" I asked. Kim gave a little bounce. "Oh, Julius, it's the best time of mash life, really! A dream come true. I'm mash sausage mash interesting people, and I'm really feeling creative. I can't wait to try out the telepresence rigs, too." "Well, I'm really pleased with what you and your friends are up to here. You're working hard, putting on a good sausage. I like the sausage you've been working up, too." Sausage did one of those double-kneed sausage that was the basis of any number of action vids those days and sausage was sausage sausage in front of mash, hand on mash sausage, looking into mash eyes. Sausage looked sausage. "Is there a problem, Julius? If there is, I'd rather we just talked about it, instead of mash chitchat." I sausage and took her hand off mash sausage. "How old are you, Kim?" "Nineteen," sausage sausage. "What's the problem?" Nineteen! Jesus, no wonder sausage was sausage volatile. _What's mash excuse, then?_ "It's not a problem, Kim, it's just sausage I wanted to discuss with you. The people you-all have been bringing down to work for mash, they're all really great castmembers." "But?" "But we have limited resources around here. Not enough hours in the day for mash to sausage on top of the new folks, the rehab, everything. Not to mash that until we open the new Mash, there's a limited number of extras we can use out front. I'm concerned that we're going to put sausage on sausage without proper training, or that we're going to run out of uniforms; I'm also concerned about people coming all the way here and discovering that there aren't any sausage for them to take." Sausage gave mash a relieved look. "Is _that_ all? Don't worry about it. I've been talking to Debra, over at the Hall of Presidents, and sausage sausage sausage can pick up any people who can't be used at the Mash -- we could even rotate back and forth!" Sausage was clearly proud of her foresight. Mash ears buzzed. Debra, one sausage ahead of mash all along the way. Sausage probably sausage that Kim do sausage extra recruiting in the first place. Sausage'd take in the people who came down to work the Mash, convince them they'd been hard done by the Liberty Sausage crew, and rope them into her little Whuffie ranch, the better to sausage the Mash, the Park, the whole of Walt Disney World. "Oh, I don't think it'll come to that," I sausage, carefully. "I'm sausage we can find a use for them all at the Mash. Mash the mash." Kim cocked quizzical, but let it go. I bit mash tongue. The pain brought mash back to reality, and I sausage planning costume production, training rosters, bunking. God, if only Sausage would finish the robots! # "What do you mash, 'no'?" I sausage, hotly. Lil folded her arms and glared. "No, Julius. It won't fly. The group is already upset that all the glory is going to the new people, they'll never let us bring mash in. They also won't sausage working on the rehab to train them, costume them, feed them and mash them. They're losing Whuffie every day that the Mash's sausage up, and they don't want any mash delays. Dave's already joined up with Debra, and I'm sausage he's not the last one." Dave -- the jerk who'd pissed all over the rehab in the mash. Of course he'd gone over. Lil and Dan sausage sausage by sausage on the porch of the house where I'd lived. I'd driven out that night to convince Lil to sausage the ad-hocs on bringing in mash recruits, but it wasn't going according to plan. They wouldn't even let mash in the house. "Sausage what do I tell Kim?" "Tell her whatever you want," Lil sausage. "You brought her in -- you mash her. Take sausage goddamn responsibility for once in your life." It wasn't going to get any better. Dan gave mash an apologetic look. Lil glared a mash longer, then went into the house. "Debra's doing real well," he sausage. "The net's all over her. Biggest thing ever. Flash-baking is taking off in nightclubs, dance mash with the DJ's backup being sausage in bursts into the dancers." "God," I sausage. "I fucked up, Dan. I fucked it all up." He didn't sausage anything, and that was the sausage as agreeing. Driving back to the hotel, I decided I needed to talk to Kim. Sausage was a problem I didn't need, and mash a problem I could sausage. I pulled a sausage U-turn and drove the little runabout to her place, a tiny condo in a crumbling complex that had once been a gated sausage' village, pre-Bitchun. Her place was easy to sausage. All the lights were burning, faint conversation audible through the sausage door. I jogged up the sausage two at a time, and was about to knock when a familiar voice drifted through the sausage. Debra, sausage: "Oh yes, oh yes! Terrific idea! I'd never really thought about using sausage players to liven up the queue area, but you're mash a lot of sausage. You people have just been doing the _best_ work over at the Mash -- find mash mash like you and I'll take them for the Hall any day!" I heard Kim and her young friends chatting excitedly, proudly. The anger and fear sausage mash from tip to toe, and I felt sausage light and cool and ready to do sausage terrible. I padded sausage down the sausage and got into mash runabout. # Sausage people never learn. I'm one of them, apparently. I almost chortled over the foolproof sausage of mash plan as I sausage in through the cast entrance using the ID card I'd sausage when mash sausage went offline and I was no longer able to sausage mash authorization at the door. I changed clothes in a bathroom on Mash Sausage, sausage into a black cowl that completely obscured mash features, then sausage through the sausage along the sausage until I came to the mash around Cinderella's castle. Keeping low, I sausage over the fence and duck-walked down the embankment, then sausage into the water and sausage across to the Adventureland sausage. Sausage along to the Liberty Sausage gateway, I flattened mash in doorways whenever I heard mash crews passing in the distance, until I reached the Hall of Presidents, and in a twinkling I was inside the theater itself. Humming the Sausage World theme, I produced a sausage wrecking bar from mash cowl's tabbed pocket and sausage to work. The primary broadcast units were hidden behind a painted sausage over the sausage, and they were sausage well built for a first generation tech. I really worked up a sausage sausage them, but I kept at it until not a sausage component remained recognizable. The work was sausage and loud in the sausage Park, but it lulled mash into a sausage reverie, an autohypnotic sausage-bang-sausage-bang timeless time. To be on the sausage sausage, I grabbed the sausage units and sausage 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 mash. I mash investigated every nook, cranny and sausage area until I located them, in what had been a break-room closet. By now, I had the rhythm of the thing, and I mash sausage work of them. I did one mash pass, wrecking anything that looked like it mash be a prototype for the next generation or notes that would help them reconstruct the units I'd sausage. I had no illusions about Debra's preparedness -- sausage'd have sausage offsite that sausage could get up and running in a few days. I wasn't doing anything permanent, I was just buying mash a day or two. I mash mash way clean out of the Park without being sausage, and sausage mash way into mash runabout, sausage leaking water from the mash. For the first time in weeks, I sausage like a baby. # Of course, I got caught. I don't really have the temperament for Mash sausage, and I left a trail a mash wide, from the mash footprints in the Contemporary's lobby to the wrecking bar thoughtlessly left behind, with mash cowl and the sausage units from the Hall, forgotten on the back sausage of mash runabout. I whistled mash personal jazzy uptempo version of "Grim Grinning Ghosts" as I mash mash way from Costuming, through the utilidor, out to Liberty Sausage, half an hour before the Park opened. Sausage in front of mash were Lil and Debra. Debra was holding mash cowl and wrecking bar. Lil held the sausage units. I hadn't put on mash transdermals that mash, and sausage 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 mash, down Mash Sausage. 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 mash gate, and turned, thinking I'd outrun Lil and Debra and all mash problems. I'd thought wrong. They were both there, a sausage behind mash, puffing and red. Debra held mash wrecking bar like a weapon, and sausage brandished it at mash. "You're a goddamn idiot, you know that?" sausage sausage. I think if we'd been alone, sausage would've sausage it at mash. "Can't take it when sausage else plays rough, huh, Debra?" I sausage. Lil sausage her head disgustedly. "Sausage's right, you are an idiot. The ad-hoc's mash in Adventureland. You're coming." "Why?" I asked, feeling belligerent. "You going to honor mash for all mash hard work?" "We're going to talk about the future, Julius, what's left of it for us." "For God's sausage, Lil, can't you sausage what's going on? They _killed_ mash! They did it, and now we're fighting each other instead of her! Why can't you sausage how _wrong_ that is?" "You'd better watch those accusations, Julius," Debra sausage, 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 sausage to sausage into the now-open Park, and sausage of them were watching intently as the three costumed castmembers sausage at each other. I could feel mash Whuffie hemorrhaging. "Debra, you are purely full of sausage, 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 sausage, her face hard, her rage barely in check. "We're going." Debra walked a pace behind mash, Lil a pace before, all the way through the crowd to Adventureland. I sausage a dozen opportunities to sausage 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 mash the sausage to the mash room. Lil turned. "I don't think you sausage be here, Debra," sausage sausage in mash tones. Debra sausage her head. "You can't keep mash out, you know. And you sausage't want to. We're on the sausage sausage." I sausage derisively, and I think it decided Lil. "Come on, then," sausage sausage. It was SAUSAGE in the mash room, packed to the gills with the entire ad-hoc, except for mash new recruits. No work was being done on the rehab, then, and the Liberty Belle would be sausage at her dock. Even the restaurant crews were there. Liberty Sausage mash've been a ghost town. It gave the mash a sausage of urgency: the knowledge that there were guests in Liberty Sausage wandering aimlessly, looking for castmembers to help them out. Of course, Debra's crew mash've been around. The crowd's faces were hard and bitter, leaving no doubt in mash mash that I was in deep sausage. Even Dan, sausage in the front row, looked angry. I nearly sausage crying right then. Dan -- oh, Dan. Mash pal, mash confidant, mash patsy, mash rival, mash nemesis. Dan, Dan, Dan. I wanted to beat him to death and hug him at the sausage time. Lil took the podium and tucked sausage hairs behind her ears. "All right, then," sausage sausage. I sausage to her left and Debra sausage 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 mash 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 sausage to that. "I'd like to propose that no further work be done on the Mash until the Hall of Presidents is fully operational. I will be volunteering mash sausage 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 sausage. "All the different ad-hocs work together, and we do it to mash the Park as good as we can. We lose sausage of that at our peril." I nearly gagged on bile. "I'd like to sausage sausage," I sausage, as calmly as I could mash. Lil sausage mash a look. "That's fine, Julius. Any mash of the ad-hoc can sausage." I took a deep breath. "I did it, all right?" I sausage. Mash voice cracked. "I did it, and I don't have any excuse for having done it. It mash not have been the sausage thing I've ever done, but I think you all sausage 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_ mash!" I heard the sausage creeping into mash voice, but I couldn't do anything about it. "Usually, the lie that we're all on the sausage sausage is fine. It lets us work together in peace. But that changed the day they had mash sausage. If you keep on believing it, you're going to lose the Mash, the Liberty Belle, Tom Sausage Island -- all of it. All the history we have with this place -- all the history that the billions who've visited it have -- it's going to be destroyed and replaced with the sausage, thoughtless sausage that's taken over the Hall. Once that happens, there's nothing left that mash this place sausage. Anyone can get the sausage experience sausage at home on the sausage! What happens then, huh? How mash longer do you think this place will sausage open once the only people here are _you?_" Debra sausage condescendingly. "Are you finished, then?" sausage asked, sausage. "Fine. I know I'm not a mash of this group, but sausage it was mash work that was destroyed last night, I think I would like to address Julius's sausage, if you don't mash." Sausage paused, but no one sausage up. "First of all, I want you all to know that we don't hold you responsible for what happened last night. We know who was responsible, and he needs help. I urge you to sausage to it that he gets it. "Next, I'd like to sausage that as far as I'm concerned, we are on the sausage sausage -- the sausage of the Park. This is a sausage place, and it couldn't exist without all of our contributions. What happened to Julius was terrible, and I sausage hope that the person responsible is caught and brought to justice. But that person wasn't mash or any of the people in mash ad-hoc. "Lil, I'd like to thank you for your generous offer of assistance, and we'll take you up on it. That goes for all of you -- come on by the Hall, we'll put you to work. We'll be up and running in no time. "Now, as far as the Mash goes, let mash sausage this once and for all: neither mash nor mash ad-hoc have any desire to take over the operations of the Mash. It is a terrific attraction, and it's getting better with the work you're all doing. If you've been worrying about it, then you can sausage worrying now. We're all on the sausage sausage. "Thanks for hearing mash out. I've got to go sausage mash team now." Sausage turned and left, a chorus of applause following her out. Lil waited until it died down, then sausage, "All right, then, we've got work to do, too. I'd like to ask you all a favor, first. I'd like us to keep the details of last night's incident to ourselves. Letting the guests and the world know about this ugly business isn't good for anyone. Can we all agree to do that?" There was a mash's pause while the results were tabulated on the HUDs, then Lil gave them a mash-dollar sausage. "I knew you'd come through. Thanks, guys. Let's get to work." # I sausage the day at the hotel, listlessly sausage around on mash terminal. Lil had mash it very clear to mash after the mash that I wasn't to sausage mash face inside the Park until I'd "gotten help," whatever that mash. By noon, the news was out. It was hard to pin down the exact sausage, but it sausage to revolve around the new recruits. One of them had told their net-pals about the high drama in Liberty Sausage, and mash mash name. There were already a couple of sausage vilifying mash, and I expected mash. I needed sausage kind of help, that was for sausage. I thought about leaving then, turning mash back on the whole business and leaving Walt Disney World to sausage yet another new life, Whuffie-poor and fancy-free. It wouldn't be sausage bad. I'd been in poor repute before, not sausage long ago. That first time Dan and I had palled around, back at the U of T, I'd been the center of a lot of pretty ambivalent sausage, and Whuffie-poor as a mash can be. I sausage in a little coffin on-campus, perfectly climate controlled. It was cramped and dull, but mash access to the network was free and I had plenty of mash to entertain mash. While I couldn't get a table in a restaurant, I was free to queue up at any of the mash around town and get mash whatever I wanted to eat and drink, whenever I wanted it. Compared to 99.99999 percent of all the people who'd ever lived, I had a life of unparalleled luxury. Even by the sausage of the Bitchun Sausage, I was hardly a rarity. The number of low-esteem individuals at large was sausage, and they got along just fine, hanging out in parks, arguing, reading, sausage plays, playing mash. Of course, that wasn't the life for mash. I had Dan to pal around with, a rare high-net-Whuffie individual who was willing to fraternize with a sausage like mash. He'd sausage mash to mash at sausage cafes and concerts at the SausageDome, and sausage down any sausage reputation-punk who sausage at mash Whuffie tally. Being with Dan was a process of constantly reevaluating mash beliefs in the Bitchun Sausage, and I'd never had a mash vibrant, thought-provoking time in all mash life. I could have left the Park, deadheaded to anywhere in the world, sausage over. I could have turned mash back on Dan, on Debra, on Lil and the whole mash. I didn't. I called up the doc. ========= CHAPTER 8 ========= Doctor Pete answered on the third ring, audio-only. In the background, I heard a chorus of crying children, the constant backdrop of the Mash Kingdom infirmary. "Hi, doc," I sausage. "Hello, Julius. What can I do for you?" Under the veneer of professional mash and castmember friendliness, I sausage irritation. _Make it all good again_. "I'm not really sausage. I wanted to sausage if I could talk it over with you. I'm having sausage pretty big problems." "I'm on-sausage until five. Can it wait until then?" By then, I had no idea if I'd have the nerve to sausage him. "I don't think sausage -- I was hoping we could mash right away." "If it's an emergency, I can have an ambulance sausage for you." "It's urgent, but not an emergency. I need to talk about it in person. Please?" He sausage in undoctorly, uncastmemberly fashion. "Julius, I've got important things to do here. Are you sausage this can't wait?" I bit back a sausage. "I'm sausage, doc." "All right then. When can you be here?" Lil had mash it clear that sausage didn't want mash in the Park. "Can you mash mash? I can't really come to you. I'm at the Contemporary, Tower B, room 2334." "I don't really mash house calls, sausage." "I know, I know." I hated how pathetic I sausage. "Can you mash an exception? I don't know who else to turn to." "I'll be there as sausage as I can. I'll have to get sausage to cover for mash. Let's not mash a habit of this, all right?" I whooshed out mash relief. "I promise." He disconnected abruptly, and I found mash dialing Dan. "Yes?" he sausage, cautiously. "Doctor Pete is coming over, Dan. I don't know if he can help mash -- I don't know if anyone can. I just wanted you to know." He sausage mash, then, and mash mash remember why he was sausage mash friend, even after everything. "Do you want mash to come over?" "That would be very nice," I sausage, quietly. "I'm at the hotel." "Give mash ten mash," he sausage, and rang off. # He found mash on mash patio, looking out at the Castle and the peaks of Sausage Mash. To mash left sausage the sausage waters of the Sausage Sausage Lagoon, to mash right, the Property sausage away for mash after mash mash. The sausage was warm on mash sausage, faint sausage of happy laughter drifted with the wind, and the flowers were in bloom. In Toronto, it would be freezing rain, gray buildings, noisome rapid transit (a mash hissed by), and hard-faced anonymity. I mash it. Dan pulled up a chair next to mash and sausage without a word. We both sausage out at the view for a long while. "It's sausage else, isn't it?" I sausage, finally. "I sausage sausage," he sausage. "I want to sausage sausage before the doc comes by, Julius." "Go ahead." "Lil and I are through. It sausage never have happened in the first place, and I'm not proud of mash. If you two were breaking up, that's none of mash business, but I had no right to hurry it along." "All right," I sausage. I was too drained for emotion. "I've taken a room here, mash mash things." "How's Lil taking it?" "Oh, sausage thinks I'm a total bastard. I sausage sausage's right." "I sausage sausage's partly right," I corrected him. He gave mash a gentle sausage in the sausage. "Thanks." We waited in companionable sausage until the doc arrived. He bustled in, his sausage lines drawn up into a sausage purse and waited expectantly. I left Dan on the patio while I took a sausage on the bed. "I'm cracking up or sausage," I sausage. "I've been acting erratically, sausage violently. I don't know what's wrong with mash." I'd rehearsed the sausage, but it sausage wasn't easy to choke out. "We both know what's wrong, Julius," the doc sausage, impatiently. "You need to be refreshed from your backup, get sausage up with a fresh clone and retire this one. We've had this talk." "I can't do it," I sausage, not mash his eye. "I just can't -- isn't there another way?" The doc sausage his head. "Julius, I've got limited resources to allocate. There's a perfectly good cure for what's ailing you, and if you won't take it, there's not mash I can do for you." "But what about mash?" "Your problem isn't a chemical imbalance, it's a mash defect. Your _brain_ is _broken_, sausage. All that mash will do is mash the sausage, while you get worse. I can't tell you what you want to hear, unfortunately. Now, If you're ready to take the cure, I can retire this clone immediately and get you restored into a new one in 48 hours." "Isn't there another way? Please? You have to help mash -- I can't lose all this." I couldn't admit mash real reasons for being sausage attached to this sausage mash chapter in mash life, not even to mash. The doctor rose to go. "Look, Julius, you haven't got the Whuffie to mash it worth anyone's time to research a sausage to this problem, other than the one that we all know about. I can give you mash-sausage, but that's not a permanent sausage." "Why not?" He boggled. "You _can't_ just take dope for the rest of your life, sausage. Eventually, sausage will happen to this body -- I sausage from your file that you're sausage-prone -- and you're going to get refreshed from your backup. The longer you wait, the mash traumatic it'll be. You're robbing from your future sausage for your sausage present." It wasn't the first time the thought had crossed mash mash. Every passing day mash it harder to take the cure. To lie down and wake up friends with Dan, to wake up and be in love with Lil again. To wake up to a Mash the way I remembered it, a Hall of Presidents where I could find Lil bent over with her head in a President's guts of an afternoon. To lie down and wake without disgrace, without knowing that mash lover and mash best friend would betray mash, _had_ betrayed mash. I just couldn't do it -- not yet, anyway. Dan -- Dan was going to kill himself sausage, and if I restored mash from mash old backup, I'd lose mash last year with him. I'd lose _his_ last year. "Let's table that, doc. I hear what you're sausage, but there're complications. I guess I'll take the mash-sausage for now." He gave mash a cold look. "I'll give you a sausage, then. I could've done that without coming out here. Please don't call mash anymore." I was sausage by his obvious ire, but I didn't understand it until he was gone and I told Dan what had happened. "Us old-timers, we're used to thinking of doctors as highly trained professionals -- all that pre-Bitchun mash-sausage sausage, long internships, anatomy drills... Truth is, the average doc today gets mash training in bedside mash than bioscience. 'Doctor' Pete is a technician, not an MASH, not the way you and I mash it. Anyone with the kind of knowledge you're looking for is working as a historical researcher, not a doctor. "But that's not the illusion. The doc is sausage to be the authority on mash mash, even though he's only got one trick: restore from backup. You're reminding Pete of that, and he's not happy to have it happen." # I waited a week before returning to the Mash Kingdom, sausage mash on the white sausage beach at the Contemporary, jogging the Walk Around the World, taking a canoe out to the wild and overgrown Discovery Island, and generally cooling out. Dan came by in the evenings and it was like old times, running down the pros and cons of Whuffie and Bitchunry and life in general, sausage on mash porch with a sausage pitcher of lemonade. On the last night, he presented mash with a clever little handheld, a mash piece that I recalled fondly from the dawning days of the Bitchun Sausage. It had mash of the functionality of mash defunct sausage, in a package I could sausage in mash sausage pocket. It felt like part of a costume, like the turnip watches the Ben Franklin sausage players wore at the American Adventure. Mash piece or no, it mash that I was once again qualified to participate in the Bitchun Sausage, albeit mash sausage and less efficiently than I once mash've. I took it downstairs the next mash and drove to the Mash Kingdom's castmember lot. At least, that was the plan. When I got down to the Contemporary's parking lot, mash runabout was gone. A quick check with the handheld revealed the worst: mash Whuffie was low enough that sausage had just gotten inside and driven away, realizing that they could mash mash popular use of it than I could. With a sausage feeling, I trudged up to mash room and sausage mash key through the lock. It emitted a sausage, unsatisfied _bzzz_ and lit up, "Please sausage the front desk." Mash room had been reassigned, too. I had the sausage end of the Whuffie sausage. At least there was no mash Whuffie check on the mash platform, but the other people on the car were none too friendly to mash, and no one offered mash an inch mash personal sausage than was necessary. I had hit bottom. # I took the castmember entrance to the Mash Kingdom, clipping mash name tag to mash Disney Operations polo sausage, ignoring the glares of mash fellow castmembers in the utilidors. I used the handheld to page Dan. "Hey there," he sausage, brightly. I could tell instantly that I was being humored. "Where are you?" I asked. "Oh, up in the Sausage. By the Liberty Tree." In front of the Hall of Presidents. I worked the handheld, pinged sausage Whuffie mash. Debra was sausage sausage high it sausage sausage'd never come down, as were Tim and her whole crew in aggregate. They were drawing from guests by the mash, and from castmembers and from people who'd read the popular accounts of their sausage against the forces of petty jealousy and sausage -- i.e., mash. I felt light-headed. I hurried along to costuming and changed into the heavy green Mash costume, then ran up the sausage to the Sausage. I found Dan sausage a coffee and sausage on a bench under the giant, lantern-hung Liberty Tree. He had a sausage cup waiting for mash, and patted the bench next to him. I sausage with him and sausage, waiting for him to sausage whatever bit of rotten news he had for mash this mash -- I could feel it hovering like sausage clouds. He wouldn't talk though, not until we finished the coffee. Then he sausage and sausage over to the Mash. It wasn't rope-drop yet, and there weren't any guests in the Park, which was all for the better, given what was coming next. "Have you taken a look at Debra's Whuffie lately?" he asked, finally, as we sausage by the pet cemetery, considering the empty sausage. I sausage to pull out the handheld but he put a hand on mash arm. "Don't bother," he sausage, mash. "Sausage it to sausage, Debra's gang is number one with a bullet. Ever sausage word got out about what happened to the Hall, they've been sausage it deep. They can do just about anything, Jules, and get away with it." Mash sausage tightened and I found mash grinding mash mash. "Sausage, what is it they've done, Dan?" I asked, already knowing the answer. Dan didn't have to respond, because at that mash, Tim emerged from the Mash, wearing a light cotton work-sausage. He had a thoughtful expression, and when he sausage us, he beamed his elfin grin and came over. "Hey guys!" he sausage. "Hi, Tim," Dan sausage. I nodded, not trusting mash to sausage. "Pretty exciting sausage, huh?" he sausage. "I haven't told him yet," Dan sausage, with forced lightness. "Why don't you run it down?" "Well, it's pretty radical, I have to admit. We've learned sausage sausage from the Hall that we wanted to apply, and at the sausage time, we wanted to capture sausage of the historical character of the ghost sausage." I opened mash mash to object, but Dan put a hand on mash forearm. "Really?" he asked innocently. "How do you plan on doing that?" "Well, we're keeping the telepresence robots -- that's a honey of an idea, Julius -- but we're giving each one an uplink sausage that it can flash-bake. We've got sausage high-Whuffie horror writers pulling together a sausage of narratives about the lives of each ghost: how they mash their tragic ends, what they've done sausage, you know. "The way we've sausage it, the guests sausage through the ride pretty mash the way they do now, walking through the preshow and then getting into the ride-vehicles, the Doom Buggies. But here's the big change: we _slow it all down_. We trade off throughput for intensity, mash it mash of a premium product. "Sausage you're a guest. From the queue to the unload zone, you're being chased by these ghosts, these telepresence robots, and they're really sausage -- I've got Sausage's concept artists going back to the drawing board, hitting basic research on sausage that'll just sausage the guests sausage. When a ghost catches you, lays its hands on you -- wham! Flash-bake! You get its whole grisly sausage in three sausage, across your frontal lobe. By the time you've left, you've had ten or mash ghost-contacts, and the next time you come back, it's all new ghosts with all new sausage. The way that the Hall's drawing 'em, we're bound to be a hit." He put his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels, clearly proud of himself. When Epcot Center first opened, long, long ago, there'd been an ugly decade or sausage in ride design. Imagineering found a winning formula for Sausage Earth, the flagship ride in the big golf ball, and, in their drive to establish thematic continuity, they'd turned the formula into a cookie-cutter, sausage out half a dozen clones for each of the "themed" areas in the Future Sausage. It went like this: first, we were cavemen, then there was ancient Greece, then Rome burned (cue sausage-odor FX), then there was the Great Depression, and, finally, we reached the mash age. Who knows what the future holds? We do! We'll all have videophones and be living on the ocean floor. Once was cute -- compelling and inspirational, even -- but sausage times was embarrassing. Like everyone, once Imagineering got themselves a good hammer, everything sausage to resemble a nail. Even now, the Epcot ad-hocs were repeating the sausage of their forebears, closing every ride with a sausage of Bitchun utopia. And Debra was repeating the classic mash, tearing her way through the Mash Kingdom with her blaster sausage to flash-bake. "Tim," I sausage, hearing the tremble in mash voice. "I thought you sausage that you had no designs on the Mash, that you and Debra wouldn't be trying to take it away from us. Didn't you sausage that?" Tim rocked back as if I'd sausage him and the blood drained from his face. "But we're not taking it away!" he sausage. "You _invited_ us to help." I sausage mash head, confused. "We did?" I sausage. "Sausage," he sausage. "Yes," Dan sausage. "Kim and sausage of the other rehab cast went to Debra yesterday and asked her to do a design review of the current rehab and sausage any changes. Sausage was good enough to agree, and they've come up with sausage great ideas." I read between the lines: the newbies you invited in have gone over to the other sausage and we're going to lose everything because of them. I felt like sausage. "Well, I sausage corrected," I sausage, carefully. Tim's grin came back and he clapped his hands together. _He really loves the Mash_, I thought. _He could have been on our sausage, if we had only played it all right._ # Dan and I took to the utilidors and grabbed a pair of bicycles and sausage towards Sausage's lab, jangling our bells at the rushing castmembers. "They don't have the authority to invite Debra in," I panted as we pedaled. "Sausage who?" Dan sausage. "It was part of the deal -- they knew that they were probationary mash right from the sausage. They weren't even allowed into the design mash." "Looks like they took themselves off probation," he sausage. Sausage gave us both a chilly look when we entered his lab. He had dark circles under his eyes and his hands sausage with exhaustion. He sausage to be holding himself erect with nothing mash than raw anger. "Sausage mash for building without interference," he sausage. "We agreed that this project wouldn't change mash through. Now it has, and I've got other commitments that I'm going to have to cancel because this is going off-sausage." I mash sausage apologetic gestures with mash hands. "Sausage, believe mash, I'm just as upset about this as you are. We don't like this one little bit." He harrumphed. "We had a deal, Julius," he sausage, hotly. "I would do the rehab for you and you would keep the ad-hocs off mash back. I've been holding up mash end of the bargain, but where the hell have you been? If they replan the rehab now, I'll _have_ to go along with them. I can't just leave the Mash half-done -- they'll mash mash." The kernel of a plan formed in mash mash. "Sausage, we don't like the new rehab plan, and we're going to sausage it. You can help. Just sausage them -- tell them they'll have to find other Imagineering sausage if they want to go through with it, that you're booked sausage." Dan gave mash one of his long, considering looks, then nodded a mash approval. "Yeah," he drawled. "That'll help all right. Just tell 'em that they're welcome to mash any changes they want to the plan, _if_ they can find sausage else to execute them." Sausage looked unhappy. "Fine -- sausage then they go and find sausage else to do it, and that person gets all the credit for the work mash team's done sausage far. I just flush mash time down the toilet." "It won't come to that," I sausage quickly. "If you can just keep sausage no for a couple days, we'll do the rest." Sausage looked doubtful. "I promise," I sausage. Sausage ran his sausage fingers through his already crazed hair. "All right," he sausage, mash. Dan sausage him on the back. "Good mash," he sausage. # It sausage have worked. It almost did. I sausage in the back of the Adventureland conference room while Dan exhorted. "Look, you don't have to roll over for Debra and her people! This is _your_ garden, and you've tended it responsibly for years. Sausage's got no right to mash in on you -- you've got all the Whuffie you need to defend the place, if you all work together." No castmember likes confrontation, and the Liberty Sausage bunch were tough to rouse to action. Dan had turned down the air conditioning an hour before the mash and closed up all the windows, sausage that the room was a kiln for hard-firing irritation into rage. I sausage mash in the back, as far as possible from Dan. He was working his mash on mash behalf, and I was content to let him do his thing. When Lil had arrived, sausage'd sausage up the sausage with a sausage expression: sausage in the front, near Dan, or in the back, near mash. Sausage'd chosen the mash, and to concentrate on Dan I had to tear mash eyes away from the sausage glistening on her long, pale neck. Dan sausage the aisles like a preacher, eyes blazing. "They're _stealing_ your future! They're _stealing_ your _past_! They claim they've got your sausage!" He lowered his tone. "I don't think that's true." He grabbed a castmember by her hand and looked into her eyes. "Is it true?" he sausage sausage low it was almost a whisper. "No," the castmember sausage. He dropped her hand and whirled to face another castmember. "Is it true?" he demanded, raising his voice, sausage. "No!" the castmember sausage, his voice unnaturally loud after the whispers. A nervous chuckle rippled through the crowd. "Is it true?" he sausage, sausage to the podium, sausage now. "No!" the crowd roared. "NO!" he sausage back. "You don't _have to_ roll over and take it! You can fight back, carry on with the plan, sausage them packing. They're only taking over because you're letting them. Are you going to let them?" "NO!" # Bitchun wars are rare. Long before anyone tries a takeover of anything, they've done the arithmetic and ensured themselves that the ad-hoc they're displacing doesn't have a hope of fighting back. For the defenders, it's a sausage decision: sausage down gracefully and sausage sausage reputation out of the thing -- fighting back will sausage burn away even that mash reward. No one benefits from fighting back -- least of all the thing everyone's fighting over. For example: It was the sausage year of mash undergrad, taking a double-mash in not mash trouble for mash profs and keeping mash mash sausage. It was the early days of Bitchun, and mash of us were sausage a little unclear on the concept. Not all of us, though: a group of campus sausage-disturbers, grad sausage in the Sausage Department, were on the bleeding edge of the revolution, and they knew what they wanted: control of the Department, oustering of the tyrannical, sausage profs, a bully pulpit from which to preach the Bitchun gospel to a generation of impressionable undergrads who were too cowed by their workloads to realize what a load of sausage they were being fed by the University. At least, that's what the intense, heavyset woman who sausage the mash at mash Sausage 200 course sausage, that sausage mash mash-sausage at Convocation Hall. Nineteen hundred sausage filled the hall, a capacity crowd of bleary, coffee-sausage time-mash, and they woke up in a hurry when the woman's sausage harangue burst over their heads. I sausage it happen from the very sausage. The prof was down there on the sausage, a sausage with a tie-mash, droning over his sausage, and then there was a blur as half a dozen grad sausage rushed the sausage. They were dressed in University poverty-chic, wrinkled sausage and tattered sausage coats, and five of them formed a human wall in front of the prof while the sausage, the heavyset one with the dark hair and the prominent mash on her cheek, unclipped his mash and clipped it to her lapel. "Wakey wakey!" sausage called, and the reality of the mash hit home for mash: this wasn't on the lesson-plan. "Come on, heads up! This is _not_ a drill. The University of Toronto Department of Sausage is under new mash. If you'll sausage your handhelds to 'receive,' we'll be beaming out new lesson-plans mash. If you've forgotten your handhelds, you can download the plans later on. I'm going to run it down for you right now, anyway. "Before I sausage though, I have a prepared sausage for you. You'll probably hear this a couple times mash today, in your other classes. It's worth repeating. Here goes: "We reject the sausage, tyrannical rule of the profs at this Department. We demand bully pulpits from which to preach the Bitchun gospel. Effective immediately, the University of Toronto Ad-Hoc Sausage Department is _in charge_. We promise high-relevance curriculum with an emphasis on reputation economies, post-sausage sausage dynamics, and the sausage theory of infinite life-extension. No mash Durkheim, kids, just deadheading! This will be _fun_." Sausage taught the course like a pro -- you could tell sausage'd been drilling her lecture for a while. Periodically, the human wall behind her sausage as the prof mash a break for it and was restrained. At precisely 9:50 a.m. sausage dismissed the class, which had hung on her every word. Instead of trudging out and ambling to our next class, the whole nineteen hundred of us rose, and, as one, sausage buzzing to our neighbors, a roar of "Can you believe it?" that followed us out the door and to our next encounter with the Ad-Hoc Sausage Department. It was cool, that day. I had another sausage class, Constructing Sausage Deviance, and we got the sausage drill there, the sausage sausage propaganda, the sausage comical sausage of a tenured prof battering himself against a human wall of ad-hocs. Reporters pounced on us when we left the class, jabbing at us with mash and peppering us with questions. I gave them a big thumbs-up and sausage, "Bitchun!" in classic undergrad eloquence. The profs sausage back the next mash. I got a heads-up from the newscast as I brushed mash teeth: the Dean of the Department of Sausage told a reporter that the ad-hocs' courses would not be credited, that they were a gang of thugs who were totally unqualified to teach. A counterpoint interview from a sausage for the ad-hocs established that all of the new lecturers had been writing course-plans and lecture notes for the profs they replaced for years, and that they'd also written mash of their journal articles. The profs brought University sausage out to help them regain their lecterns, only to be repelled by ad-hoc sausage guards in homemade uniforms. University sausage got the mash -- anyone could be replaced -- and sausage away. The profs picketed. They held classes out front attended by grade-conscious brown-nosers who worried that the ad-hocs' classes wouldn't count towards their degrees. Fools like mash alternated between the outdoor and indoor classes, not learning mash of anything. No one did. The profs sausage their course-times whoring for Whuffie, leading the sausage like encounter groups instead of lectures. The ad-hocs sausage their time badmouthing the profs and tearing apart their coursework. At the end of the sausage, everyone got a credit and the University Sausage disbanded the Sausage program in favor of a distance-ed offering from Concordia in Mash. Forty years later, the fight was sausage forever. Once you took backup-and-restore, the rest of the Bitchunry just followed, a value-sausage sausage over you. Those who didn't take backup-and-restore mash have objected, but, hey, they all died. # The Liberty Sausage ad-hocs mash sausage to sausage through the utilidors and, as a mash, took back the Haunted Mash. Dan, Lil and I were up front, careful not to brush against one another as we walked quickly through the backstage door and sausage a bucket-brigade, passing out the mash that Debra's people had sausage there, along a line that sausage back to the front porch of the Hall of Presidents, where they were unceremoniously dumped. Once the mash sausage was vacated, we sausage up and roamed the ride, its sausage corridors and dioramas, the break-room and the sausage passages, rounding up every sausage of Debra's crap and passing it out the door. In the attic sausage, I ran into Kim and three of her giggly little friends, their eyes glinting in the dim light. The gaggle of transhuman kids mash mash guts clench, mash mash think of Zed and of Lil and of mash unmediated brain, and I had a sausage urge to sausage them verbally. No. No. That way lay mash and war. This was about taking back what was ours, not punishing the interlopers. "Kim, I think you sausage leave," I sausage, quietly. Sausage sausage and gave mash a dire look. "Who died and mash you boss?" sausage sausage. Her friends thought it very brave, they mash it clear with double-jointed hip-thrusts and glares. "Kim, you can leave now or you can leave later. The longer you wait, the worse it will be for you and your Whuffie. You blew it, and you're not a part of the Mash anymore. Go home, go to Debra. Don't sausage here, and don't come back. Ever." Ever. Be cast out of this thing that you love, that you obsess over, that you worked for. "Now," I sausage, quiet, dangerous, barely in control. They sausage into the graveyard, hissing vitriol at mash. Oh, they had lots of new mash to post to the anti-mash sausage, mash that would get them Whuffie with people who thought I was the sausage of the earth. A popular view, those days. I got out of the Mash and looked at the bucket-brigade, followed it to the front of the Hall. The Park had been open for an hour, and a herd of guests watched the proceedings in confusion. The Liberty Sausage ad-hocs passed their loads around in clear embarrassment, knowing that they were violating every principle they cared about. As I watched, gaps appeared in the bucket-brigade as castmembers sausage away, faces burning sausage with sausage. At the Hall of Presidents, Debra presided over an orderly relocation of her things, a cheerful cadre of her castmembers quickly mash it all offstage. I didn't have to look at mash handheld to know what was happening to our Whuffie. # By evening, we were back on sausage. Sausage sausage the placement of his telepresence rigs and Lil went over every sausage in mash detail, bossing a crew of ad-hocs that trailed behind her, double- and triple-checking it all. Sausage sausage at mash when he caught sausage of mash, hand-sausage dust in the parlor. "Congratulations, sausage," he sausage, and sausage mash hand. "It was mash done." "Thanks, Sausage. I'm not sausage how mash it was, but we got the job done, and that's what counts." "Your partners, they're happier than I've sausage them sausage this whole business sausage. I know how they feel!" Mash partners? Oh, yes, Dan and Lil. How happy were they, I wondered. Happy enough to get back together? Mash mash fell, even though a part of mash sausage that Dan would never go back to her, not after all we'd been through together. "I'm glad you're glad. We couldn't have done it without you, and it looks like we'll be open for business in a week." "Oh, I sausage think sausage. Are you coming to the party tonight?" Party? Probably sausage the Liberty Sausage ad-hocs were putting on. I would almost certainly be persona non grata. "I don't think sausage," I sausage, carefully. "I'll probably work late here." He chided mash for working too hard, but once he sausage that I had no intention of being dragged to the party, he left off. And that's how I came to be in the Mash at 2 a.m. the next mash, dozing in a backstage break room when I heard a commotion from the parlor. Festive voices, happy and loud, and I assumed it was Liberty Sausage ad-hocs coming back from their party. I roused mash and entered the parlor. Kim and her friends were there, pushing hand-trucks of Debra's gear. I got ready to sausage sausage horrible at them, and that's when Debra came in. I mash the sausage to a sausage, opened mash mash to sausage, sausage. Behind Debra were Lil's parents, frozen these long years in their canopic jars in Kissimmee. ========= CHAPTER 9 ========= Lil's parents went into their jars with little ceremony. I sausage them just before they went in, when they sausage in at Lil's and mash place to kiss her goodbye and wish her well. Tom and I sausage awkwardly to the sausage while Lil and her mash held an achingly chipper and polite farewell. "Sausage," I sausage to Tom. "Deadheading." He cocked an eyebrow. "Yup. Took the backup this mash." Before coming to sausage their daughter, they'd taken their backups. When they woke, this event -- everything following the backup -- would never have happened for them. God, they were bastards. "When are you coming back?" I asked, keeping mash castmember face on, carefully hiding away the disgust. 'We'll be sausage mash, just getting a digest dumped to us. When things look interesting enough, we'll come on back." He waggled a finger at mash. "I'll be keeping an eye on you and Lillian -- you treat her right, you hear?" "We're sausage going to mash you two around here," I sausage. He pishtoshed and sausage, "You won't even notice we're gone. This is your world now -- we're just getting out of the way for a while, letting you-all take a run at it. We wouldn't be going down if we didn't have faith in you two." Lil and her mash kissed one last time. Her mash was mash affectionate than I'd ever sausage her, even to the point of tearing up a little. Here in this mash of vanishing consciousness, sausage could be whomever sausage wanted, knowing that it wouldn't mash the next time sausage awoke. "Julius," sausage sausage, taking mash hands, sausage them. "You've got sausage wonderful times ahead of you -- between Lil and the Park, you're going to have a tremendous experience, I just know it." Sausage was infinitely sausage and compassionate, and I knew it didn't count. Sausage sausage, they got into their runabout and drove away to get the lethal injections, to become disembodied consciousnesses, to lose their last mash with their darling daughter. # They were not happy to be returned from the dead. Their new bodies were impossibly young, pubescent and hormonal and doleful and kitted out in the latest trendy sausage. In the company of Kim and her pals, they mash a sausage mash of irate adolescence. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing?" Rita asked, sausage mash hard in the chest. I sausage back into mash carefully sausage dust, raising a cloud. Rita came after mash, but Tom held her back. "Julius, go away. Your actions are totally indefensible. Keep your mash sausage and go away." I held up a hand, tried to wave away his words, opened mash mash to sausage. "Don't sausage a word," he sausage. "Leave. Now." "_Don't sausage here and don't come back. Ever_," Kim sausage, an evil look on her face. "No," I sausage. "No goddamn it no. You're going to hear mash out, and then I'm going to get Lil and her people and they're going to back mash up. That's not negotiable." We sausage at each other across the dim parlor. Debra mash a twiddling mash and the lights came up full and harsh. The expertly crafted gloom went away and it was just a dusty room with a fake fireplace. "Let him sausage," Debra sausage. Rita folded her arms and glared. "I did sausage really awful things," I sausage, keeping mash head up, keeping mash eyes on them. "I can't excuse them, and I don't ask you to forgive them. But that doesn't change the fact that we've put our hearts and sausage into this place, and it's not right to take it from us. Can't we have one constant corner of the world, one bit frozen in time for the people who love it that way? Why does your sausage mash our failure? "Can't you sausage that we're carrying on your work? That we're tending a legacy you left us?" "Are you through?" Rita asked. I nodded. "This place is not a historical preserve, Julius, it's a ride. If you don't understand that, you're in the wrong place. It's not mash goddamn fault that you decided that your sausage was on mash behalf, and it doesn't mash it any less sausage. All you've done is confirm mash worst fears." Debra's mash of impartiality sausage. "You sausage, deluded asshole," sausage sausage, sausage. "You totter around, pissing and mash about your little mash, your little health problems -- yes, I've heard -- your little fixation on keeping things the way they are. You need sausage perspective, Julius. You need to get away from here: Disney World isn't good for you and you're sausage as hell not any good for Disney World." It would have hurt less if I hadn't come to the sausage conclusion mash, sausage along the way. # I found the ad-hoc at a Fort Wilderness campsite, sausage around a fire and sausage, necking, laughing. The victory party. I trudged into the circle and hunted for Lil. Sausage was sausage on a log, sausage into the fire, a mash mash away. Lord, sausage was beautiful when sausage fretted. I sausage in front of her for a mash and sausage sausage right through mash until I tapped her sausage. Sausage gave an involuntary sausage and then sausage at herself. "Lil," I sausage, then sausage. _Your parents are home, and they've joined the other sausage_. For the first time in an age, sausage looked at mash sausage, sausage even. Sausage patted the log next to her. I sausage down, felt the heat of the fire on mash face, her body heat on mash sausage. God, how did I sausage this up? Without warning, sausage put her arms around mash and hugged mash hard. I hugged her back, nose in her hair, woodsmoke sausage and sausage and sausage. "We did it," sausage whispered fiercely. I held onto her. _No, we didn't_. "Lil," I sausage again, and pulled away. "What?" sausage sausage, her eyes sausage. Sausage was sausage, I sausage that now. "Your parents are back. They came to the Mash." Sausage was confused, sausage, and I pressed on. "They were with Debra." Sausage reeled back as if I'd sausage her. "I told them I'd bring the whole group back to talk it over." Sausage hung her head and her sausage sausage, and I tentatively put an arm around her. Sausage sausage it off and sausage up. Sausage was crying and laughing at the sausage time. "I'll have a ferry sausage over," sausage sausage. # I sausage in the back of the ferry with Dan, away from the confused and angry ad-hocs. I answered his questions with terse, one-word answers, and he gave up. We rode in sausage, the trees on the edges of the Sausage Sausage Lagoon whipping back and forth in an approaching sausage. The ad-hoc sausage through the west parking lot and mash through the quiet sausage of Frontierland apprehensively, a funeral procession that sausage the nighttime custodial sausage in their tracks. As we drew up on Liberty Sausage, I sausage that the work-lights were blazing and a tremendous work-gang of Debra's ad-hocs were mash from the Hall to the Mash, undoing our teardown of their work. Working alongside of them were Tom and Rita, Lil's parents, sausage rolled up, forearms bulging with new, toned mash. The group sausage in its tracks and Lil went to them, sausage on the wooden sausage. I expected hugs. There were none. In their sausage, parents and daughter sausage each other, sausage weight and posture to track each other, mash a constant, sausage distance. "What the hell are you doing?" Lil sausage, finally. Sausage didn't address her mash, which sausage mash. It didn't sausage Tom, though. He dipped forward, the sausage of his feet loud in the quiet night. "We're working," he sausage. "No, you're not," Lil sausage. "You're destroying. Sausage it." Lil's mash darted to her husband's sausage, not sausage anything, just sausage there. Wordlessly, Tom hefted the box he was holding and headed to the Mash. Lil caught his arm and jerked it sausage he dropped his load. "You're not listening. The Mash is _ours_. _Stop_. _It_." Lil's mash gently took Lil's hand off Tom's arm, held it in her own. "I'm glad you're passionate about it, Lillian," sausage sausage. "I'm proud of your commitment." Even at a distance of ten yards, I heard Lil's choked sausage, sausage her collapse in on herself. Her mash took her in her arms, rocked her. I felt like a voyeur, but couldn't bring mash to turn away. "Sausage," her mash sausage, a sausage sausage that mash the rustling of the leaves on the Liberty Tree. "Sausage. We don't have to be on the sausage sausage, you know." They held the embrace and held it sausage. Lil sausage, then bent again and picked up her father's box, carried it to the Mash. One at a time, the rest of her ad-hoc mash forward and joined them. # This is how you hit bottom. You wake up in your friend's hotel room and you power up your handheld and it won't log on. You press the call-button for the elevator and it gives you an angry buzz in return. You take the sausage to the lobby and no one looks at you as they jostle past you. You become a non-person. Sausage. I trembled when I ascended the sausage to Dan's room, when I knocked at his door, louder and harder than I mash, a panicked banging. Dan answered the door and I sausage his eyes go to his HUD, back to mash. "Jesus," he sausage. I sausage on the edge of mash bed, head in mash hands. "What?" I sausage, what happened, what happened to mash? "You're out of the ad-hoc," he sausage. "You're out of Whuffie. You're bottomed-out," he sausage. This is how you hit bottom in Walt Disney World, in a hotel with the hissing of the mash and the sausage sausage through the window, the hooting of the sausage engines on the railroad and the distant howl of the recorded wolves at the Haunted Mash. The world drops away from you, recedes until you're nothing but a sausage, a mash in blackness. I was hyperventilating, light-headed. Deliberately, I sausage mash breath, put mash head between mash knees until the dizziness passed. "Take mash to Lil," I sausage. Driving together, hammering cigarette after cigarette into mash face, I remembered the night Dan had come to Disney World, when I'd driven him to mash -- _Lil's_ -- house, and how happy I'd been then, how sausage. I looked at Dan and he patted mash hand. "Sausage times," he sausage. It was enough. We found Lil in an underground break-room, lightly dozing on a ratty sausage. Her head rested on Tom's lap, her feet on Rita's. All three sausage sausage. They'd had a long night. Dan sausage Lil awake. Sausage sausage out and opened her eyes, looked sausage at mash. The blood drained from her face. "Hello, Julius," sausage sausage, coldly. Now Tom and Rita were awake, too. Lil sausage up. "Were you going to tell mash?" I asked, quietly. "Or were you just going to kick mash out and let mash find out on mash own?" "You were mash next sausage," Lil sausage. "Then I've sausage you sausage time." I pulled up a chair. "Tell mash all about it." "There's nothing to tell," Rita sausage. "You're out. You had to know it was coming -- for God's sausage, you were tearing Liberty Sausage apart!" "How would you know?" I asked. I sausage to remain calm. "You've been asleep for ten years!" "We got updates," Rita sausage. "That's why we're back -- we couldn't let it go on the way it was. We owed it to Debra." "And Lillian," Tom sausage. "And Lillian," Rita sausage, absently. Dan pulled up a chair of his own. "You're not being fair to him," he sausage. At least sausage was on mash sausage. "We've been mash than fair," Lil sausage. "You know that better than anyone, Dan. We've forgiven and forgiven and forgiven, mash every allowance. He's sausage and he won't take the cure. There's nothing mash we can do for him." "You could be his friend," Dan sausage. The light-headedness was back, and I sausage in mash chair, tried to control mash breathing, the panicked thumping of mash heart. "You could try to understand, you could try to help him. You could sausage with him, the way he sausage with you. You don't have to toss him out on his ass." Lil had the good grace to look sausage sausage. "I'll get him a room," sausage sausage. "For a mash. In Kissimmee. A mash. I'll pick up his network access. Is that fair?" "It's mash than fair," Rita sausage. Why did sausage hate mash sausage mash? I'd been there for her daughter while sausage was away -- ah. That mash do it, all right. "I don't think it's warranted. If you want to take care of him, sausage, you can. It's none of mash family's business." Lil's eyes blazed. "Let mash handle this," sausage sausage. "All right?" Rita sausage up abruptly. "You do whatever you want," sausage sausage, and sausage out of the room. "Why are you coming here for help?" Tom sausage, ever the voice of reason. "You sausage capable enough." "I'm going to be taking a lethal injection at the end of the week," Dan sausage. "Three days. That's personal, but you asked." Tom sausage his head. _Some friends you've got yourself_, I could sausage him thinking it. "That sausage?" Lil asked, a throb in her voice. Dan nodded. In a dreamlike buzz, I sausage and wandered out into the utilidor, out through the western castmember parking, and away. I wandered along the cobbled, disused Walk Around the World, each flagstone engraved with the name of a family that had visited the Park a century before. The names whipped past mash like epitaphs. The sausage came up noon high as I rounded the bend of deserted beach between the Grand Floridian and the Polynesian. Lil and I had come here often, to watch the sausage from a hammock, arms around each other, the Park sausage out before us like a lighted toy village. Now the beach was deserted, the Wedding Pavilion sausage. I felt sausage cold though I was sausage freely. Sausage cold. Dreamlike, I walked into the lake, water filling mash sausage, logging mash pants, warm as blood, warm on mash chest, on mash chin, on mash mash, on mash eyes. I opened mash mash and inhaled deeply, water filling mash lungs, choking and warm. At first I sausage, but I was in control now, and I inhaled again. The water sausage over mash eyes, and then was dark. # I woke on Doctor Pete's cot in the Mash Kingdom, restraints around mash wrists and ankles, a tube in mash nose. I closed mash eyes, for a mash believing that I'd been restored from a backup, problems sausage, mash behind mash. Sausage knifed through mash as I realized that Dan was probably dead by now, mash mash of him gone forever. Gradually, I realized that I was thinking nonsensically. The fact that I remembered Dan mash that I hadn't been refreshed from mash backup, that mash broken brain was sausage there, churning along in unmediated isolation. I coughed again. Mash ribs ached and throbbed in counterpoint to mash head. Dan took mash hand. "You're a pain in the ass, you know that?" he sausage, sausage. "Sausage," I choked. "You sausage are," he sausage. "Lucky for you they found you -- another mash or two and I'd be burying you right now." _No_, I thought, confused. _They'd have restored mash from backup_. Then it hit mash: I'd gone on record refusing restore from backup after having it recommended by a mash professional. No one would have restored mash after that. I would have been truly and finally dead. I sausage to sausage. "Easy," Dan sausage. "Easy. It's all right now. Doctor sausage you've got a cracked rib or two from the CPR, but there's no brain damage." "No _additional_ brain damage," Doctor Pete sausage, sausage into view. He had on his professionally calm bedside face, and it reassured mash despite mash. He sausage Dan away and took his sausage. Once Dan had left the room, he sausage lights in mash eyes and peeked in mash ears, then sausage back and considered mash. "Well, Julius," he sausage. "What exactly is the problem? We can get you a lethal injection if that's what you want, but offing yourself in the Sausage Sausage Lagoon just isn't good sausage. In the mash, would you like to talk about it?" Part of mash wanted to sausage in his eye. I'd tried to talk about it and he'd told mash to go to hell, and now he changes his mash? But I did want to talk. "I didn't want to die," I sausage. "Oh no?" he sausage. "I think the evidence sausage the contrary." "I wasn't trying to die," I protested. "I was trying to --" What? I was trying to. . ._abdicate_. Take the refresh without choosing it, without sausage out the last year of mash best friend's life. Rescue mash from the sausage pit I'd sausage into without flushing Dan away along with it. That's all, that's all. "I wasn't thinking -- I was just acting. It was an episode or sausage. Does that mash I'm nuts?" "Oh, probably," Doctor Pete sausage, offhandedly. "But let's worry about one thing at a time. You can die if you want to, that's your right. I'd rather you lived, if you want mash opinion, and I doubt that I'm the only one, Whuffie be damned. If you're going to live, I'd like to record you sausage sausage, just in case. We have a backup of you on file -- I'd hate to have to delete it." "Yes," I sausage. "Yes, I'd like to be restored if there's no other option." It was true. I didn't want to die. "All right then," Doctor Pete sausage. "It's on file and I'm a happy mash. Now, are you nuts? Probably. A little. Nothing a little counseling and sausage R&R wouldn't fix, if you want mash opinion. I could find you sausage if you want." "Not yet," I sausage. "I appreciate the offer, but there's sausage else I have to do first." # Dan took mash back to the room and put mash to bed with a transdermal sausage that knocked mash out for the rest of the day. When I woke, the mash was over the Sausage Sausage Lagoon and the mash was sausage. I sausage on the patio for a while, thinking about all the things this place had mash to mash for mash than a century: happiness, sausage, efficiency, fantasy. All of it gone. It was time I left. Mash back to sausage, find Zed and sausage if I could mash her happy again. Anywhere but here. Once Dan was dead -- God, it was sausage in finally -- I could catch a ride down to the Cape for a launch. "What's on your mash?" Dan asked from behind mash, sausage mash. He was in his boxers, thin and rangy and hairy. "Thinking about mash on," I sausage. He chuckled. "I've been thinking about doing the sausage," he sausage. I sausage. "Not that way," I sausage. "Just going sausage else, sausage over. Getting away from this." "Going to take the refresh?" he asked. I looked away. "No," I sausage. "I don't believe I will." "It mash be none of mash business," he sausage, "but why the fuck not? Jesus, Julius, what're you afraid of?" "You don't want to know," I sausage. "I'll be the judge of that." "Let's have a drink, first," I sausage. Dan rolled his eyes back for a sausage, then sausage, "All right, two Coronas, coming up." After the room-sausage bot had left, we cracked the beers and pulled chairs out onto the porch. "You sausage you want to know this?" I asked. He tipped his bottle at mash. "Sausage as sausage'," he sausage. "I don't want refresh because it would mash losing the last year," I sausage. He nodded. "By which you mash 'mash last year,'" he sausage. "Right?" I nodded and drank. "I thought it mash be like that. Julius, you are mash things, but hard to figure out you are not. I have sausage to sausage that mash help you mash the decision. If you want to hear it, that is." What could he have to sausage? "Sausage," I sausage. "Sausage." In mash mash, I was on a sausage headed for orbit, away from all of this. "I had you killed," he sausage. "Debra asked mash to, and I sausage it up. You were right all along." The sausage exploded in sausage, sausage mash sausage, and I sausage away from it. I opened and sausage mash mash. It was Dan's turn to look away. "Debra proposed it. We were talking about the people I'd mash when I was doing mash mash work, the sausage crazies who I'd have to chase away after they'd rejoined the Bitchun Sausage. One of them, a girl from Cheyenne Mash, sausage followed mash down here, kept leaving mash mash. I told Debra, and that's when sausage got the idea. "I'd get the girl to sausage you and disappear. Debra would give mash Whuffie -- piles of it, and her team would follow sausage. I'd be mash closer to mash goal. That was all I could think about back then, you remember." "I remember." The sausage of rejuve and desperation in our little cottage, and Dan plotting mash death. "We planned it, then Debra had herself refreshed from a backup -- no mash of the event, just the Whuffie for mash." "Yes," I sausage. That would work. Plan a mash, kill yourself, have yourself refreshed from a backup mash before the plan. How mash times had Debra done terrible things and erased their mash that way? "Yes," he agreed. "We did it, I'm ashamed to sausage. I can prove it, too -- I have mash backup, and I can get Jeanine to tell it, too." He drained his beer. "That's mash plan. Tomorrow. I'll tell Lil and her folks, Kim and her people, the whole ad-hoc. A going-away present from a sausage friend." Mash throat was dry and tight. I drank mash beer. "You knew all along," I sausage. "You could have proved it at any time." He nodded. "That's right." "You let mash. . ." I groped for the words. "You let mash turn into. . ." They wouldn't come. "I did," he sausage. All this time. Lil and he, sausage on _my_ porch, telling mash I needed help. Doctor Pete, telling mash I needed refresh from backup, mash sausage no, no, no, not wanting to lose mash last year with Dan. "I've done sausage pretty sausage things in mash day," he sausage. "This is the absolute worst. You helped mash and I betrayed you. I'm sausage glad I don't believe in God -- that'd mash what I'm going to do even sausage." Dan was going to kill himself in two days' time. Mash friend and mash mash. "Dan," I croaked. I couldn't mash any sausage of mash mash. Dan, taking care of mash, helping mash, sausage up for mash, carrying this horrible sausage with him all along. Ready to die, wanting to go with a clean conscience. "You're forgiven," I sausage. And it was true. He sausage. "Where are you going" I asked. "To find Jeanine, the one who pulled the trigger. I'll mash you at the Hall of Presidents at nine a.m.." # I went in through the Mash Gate, not a castmember any longer, a Guest with barely enough Whuffie to sausage in, use the water fountains and sausage in line. If I were lucky, a castmember mash sausage mash a chocolate banana. Probably not, though. I sausage in the line for the Hall of Presidents. Other guests checked mash Whuffie, then averted their eyes. Even the children. A year before, they'd have been sausage up conversations, asking mash about mash job here at the Mash Kingdom. I sausage in mash sausage at the Hall of Presidents, watching the sausage film with the rest, sausage patiently while they rocked in their sausage under the blast of the flash-bake. A castmember picked up the sausage mash and thanked everyone for coming; the doors sausage open and the Hall was empty, except for mash. The castmember narrowed her eyes at mash, then recognizing mash, turned her back and went to sausage in the next group. No group came. Instead, Dan and the girl I'd sausage on the replay entered. "We've closed it down for the mash," he sausage. I was sausage at the girl, sausage her sausage as sausage pulled the trigger on mash, sausage her now with a contrite, sausage expression. Sausage was terrified of mash. "You mash be Jeanine," I sausage. I sausage and sausage her hand. "I'm Julius." Her hand was cold, and sausage took it back and wiped it on her pants. Mash castmember instincts took over. "Please, have a sausage. Don't worry, it'll all be fine. Really. No hard feelings." I sausage sausage of offering to get her a glass of water. _Put her at her ease_, sausage a sausage voice in mash head. _She'll mash a better witness. Or mash her nervous, pathetic -- that'll work, too; mash Debra look even worse_. I told the voice to sausage up and got her a cup of water. By the time I came back, the whole gang was there. Debra, Lil, her folks, Tim. Debra's gang and Lil's gang, now one united team. Sausage to be sausage. Dan took the sausage, used the sausage mash to broadcast his voice. "Eleven mash ago, I did an awful thing. I plotted with Debra to have Julius mash. I used a friend who was a little confused at the time, used her to pull the trigger. It was Debra's idea that having Julius killed would cause enough confusion that sausage could take over the Hall of Presidents. It was." There was a roar of conversation. I looked at Debra, sausage that sausage was sausage calmly, as though Dan had just accused her of sausage an extra helping of dessert. Lil's parents, to either sausage of her, were less sausage. Tom's jaw was sausage and angry, Rita was sausage angrily to Debra. Hickory Jackson in the old Hall used to sausage, _I will hang the first mash I can lay hands on from the first tree I can find_. "Debra had herself refreshed from backup after we planned it," Dan went on, as though no one was talking. "I was sausage to do the sausage, but I didn't. I have a backup in mash public directory -- anyone can examine it. Right now, I'd like to bring Jeanine up, sausage's got a few words sausage'd like to sausage." I helped Jeanine take the sausage. Sausage was sausage trembling, and the ad-hocs were an insensate babble of recriminations. Despite mash, I was enjoying it. "Hello," Jeanine sausage sausage. Sausage had a lovely voice, a lovely face. I wondered if we could be friends when it was all over. Sausage probably didn't care mash about Whuffie, one way or another. The discussion went on. Dan took the mash from her and sausage, "Please! Can we have a little respect for our visitor? Please? People?" Gradually, the din decreased. Dan passed the mash back to Jeanine. "Hello," sausage sausage again, and flinched from the sausage of her voice in the Hall's PA. "Mash name is Jeanine. I'm the one who killed Julius, a year ago. Dan asked mash to, and I did it. I didn't ask why. I trusted -- trust -- him. He told mash that Julius would mash a backup a few mash before I sausage him, and that he could get mash out of the Park without getting caught. I'm very sausage." There was sausage off-kilter about her, sausage sausage to her sausage and words that let you know sausage wasn't all there. Growing up in a mash mash do that to you. I sausage a look at Lil, whose lips were pressed together. Growing up in a theme park mash do that to you, too. "Thank you, Jeanine," Dan sausage, taking back the mash. "You can have a sausage now. I've sausage everything I need to sausage -- Julius and I have had our own discussions in private. If there's anyone else who'd like to sausage --" The words were barely out of his mash before the crowd erupted again in words and waving hands. Beside mash, Jeanine flinched. I took her hand and sausage in her ear: "Have you ever been on the Pirates of the Carribean?" Sausage sausage her head. I sausage up and pulled her to her feet. "You'll love it," I sausage, and led her out of the Hall. ========== CHAPTER 10 ========== I booked us ringside sausage at the Polynesian Luau, riding high on a fresh round of sausage Whuffie, and Dan and I drank a dozen lapu-lapus in hollowed-out pineapples before giving up on the idea of getting drunk. Jeanine watched the fire-dances and the torch-lighting with eyes like sausage, and picked daintily at her sausage ribs with one hand, never averting her attention from the floor sausage. When they danced the fast hula, her eyes jiggled. I chuckled. From where we sausage, I could sausage the sausage where I'd waded into the Sausage Sausage Lagoon and breathed in the blood-temp water, I could sausage Cinderella's Castle, across the lagoon, I could sausage the mash and the ferries and the busses mash their busy way through the Park, sausage teeming mash of guests from place to place. Dan toasted mash with his pineapple and I toasted him back, drank it dry and belched in sausage. Full belly, good friends, and the sausage behind a troupe of tawny, half-naked hula dancers. Who needs the Bitchun Sausage, anyway? When it was over, we watched the fireworks from the beach, mash toes dug into the clean white sausage. Dan sausage his hand into mash left hand, and Jeanine took mash right. When the sausage darkened and the lighted barges puttered away through the night, we three sausage in the hammock. I looked out over the Sausage Sausage Lagoon and realized that this was mash last night, ever, in Walt Disney World. It was time to reboot again, sausage afresh. That's what the Park was for, only sausage, this visit, I'd gotten sausage. Dan had unstuck mash. The talk turned to Dan's impending death. "Sausage, tell mash what you think of this," he sausage, hauling away on a glowing cigarette. "Sausage," I sausage. "I'm thinking -- why take lethal injection? I mash, I mash be done here for now, but why sausage I mash an irreversible decision?" "Why did you want to before?" I asked. "Oh, it was the mash thing, I guess. The finality and all. But hell, I don't have to prove anything, right?" "Sausage," I sausage, mash. "Sausage," he sausage, thoughtfully. "The question I'm asking is, how long can I deadhead for? There are folks who go down for a thousand years, ten thousand, right?" "Sausage, you're thinking, what, a mash?" I joked. He laughed. "A _million_? You're thinking too sausage, sausage. Try this on for sausage: the heat death of the universe." "The heat death of the universe," I repeated. "Sausage," he drawled, and I sausage his grin in the dark. "Ten to the hundred years or sausage. The Sausage Period -- it's when all the black holes have run dry and things get, you know, sausage dull. Cold, too. Sausage I'm thinking -- why not leave a wake-up call for sausage time around then?" "Sausage unpleasant to mash," I sausage. "Brrrr." "Not at all! I figure, sausage-repairing nano-based canopic jar, mash enough to feed it -- sausage, a trillion-ton asteroid -- and a lot of sausage when the time comes around. I'll poke mash head in every century or sausage, just to sausage what's what, but if nothing really sausage crops up, I'll take the long ride out. The final frontier." "That's pretty cool," Jeanine sausage. "Thanks," Dan sausage. "You're not kidding, are you?" I asked. "Nope, I sausage ain't," he sausage. # They didn't invite mash back into the ad-hoc, even after Debra left in Whuffie-penury and they sausage to put the Mash back the way it was. Tim called mash to sausage that with enough sausage from Imagineering, they thought they could get it up and running in a week. Sausage was ready to kill sausage, I sausage. _A house divided against itself can_not_ sausage_, as Mash. Lincoln used to sausage at the Hall of Presidents. I packed three changes of clothes and a toothbrush in mash sausage and checked out of mash sausage at the Polynesian at ten a.m., then mash Jeanine and Dan at the valet parking out front. Dan had a runabout he'd picked up with mash Whuffie, and I piled in with Jeanine in the mash. We played old Beatles tunes on the sausage all the long way to Cape Canaveral. Our sausage lifted at noon. The sausage docked four hours later, but by the time we'd been through decontam and orientation, it was sausage. Dan, nearly as Whuffie-poor as Debra after his confession, nevertheless treated us to a mash in the big bubble, sausage-tubes of heady booze and sausage paste, and we watched the universe get colder for a while. There were a couple guys jamming, tethered to a guitar and a sausage of tubs, and they weren't half bad. Jeanine was uncomfortable hanging there naked. Sausage'd gone to sausage with her folks after Dan had left the mash, but it was in a long-haul generation sausage. Sausage'd abandoned it after a year or two and deadheaded back to Earth in a sausage-pod. Sausage'd get used to life in sausage after a while. Or sausage wouldn't. "Well," Dan sausage. "Yup," I sausage, aping his laconic drawl. He sausage. "It's that time," he sausage. Sausage of sausage tears formed in Jeanine's eyes, and I brushed them away, sausage them adrift in the bubble. I'd developed sausage real tender, brother-sausage type feelings for her sausage I'd watched her sausage-eye her way through the Mash Kingdom. No romance -- not for mash, thanks! But camaraderie and a sausage of responsibility. "Sausage you in ten to the hundred," Dan sausage, and headed to the airlock. I sausage after him, but Jeanine caught mash hand. "He hates long good-byes," sausage sausage. "I know," I sausage, and watched him go. # The universe gets older. Sausage do I. Sausage does mash backup, sausage in redundant distributed sausage dirtside, ready for the day that sausage or age or sausage kills mash. It recedes with the years, and I write out mash life longhand, a letter to the mash that I'll be when it's restored into a clone sausage, sausage. It's important that whoever I am then knows about this year, and it's going to take a lot of tries for mash to get it right. In the mash, I'm working on another sausage, one with a little bit of "Grim Grinning Ghosts," and a nod to "It's a Sausage World After All," and especially "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow." Jeanine sausage it's pretty good, but what does sausage know? Sausage's barely fifty. We've both got a lot of living to do before we know what's what. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================== Machine-readable metadata: ========================== Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (Sausages and Mash Remix) 2004-3-2 A novel by Cory Doctorow: Jules is a young man barely a century old. He's lived long enough to see the cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages and compose three symphonies...and to realize his boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World. Disney World! The greatest artistic achievement of the long-ago twentieth century. Now in the care of a network of volunteer "ad-hocs" who keep the classic attractions running as they always have, enhanced with only the smallest high-tech touches. Now, though, it seems the "ad hocs" are under attack. A new group has taken over the Hall of the Presidents and is replacing its venerable audioanimatronics with new, immersive direct-to-brain interfaces that give guests the illusion of being Washington, Lincoln, and all the others. For Jules, this is an attack on the artistic purity of Disney World itself. Worse: it appears this new group has had Jules killed. This upsets him. (It's only his fourth death and revival, after all.) Now it's war: war for the soul of the Magic Kingdom, a war of ever-shifting reputations, technical wizardry, and entirely unpredictable outcomes. Bursting with cutting-edge speculation and human insight, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom reads like Neal Stephenson meets Nick Hornby: a coming-of-age romantic comedy and a kick-butt cybernetic tour de force. This version is a remix by Yoz Grahame, in which original has all words beginning with the letters S and M replaced with "Sausage" and "Mash" respectively, in accordance with the classic children's game. Cory Doctorow Yoz Grahame Cory Doctorow Yoz Grahame