Power Play (17 page)

“We could try the entrance by Splash Mountain,” Finn suggested.

“We’d have to cross the entire Park to get there,” Philby said. “And if these guys are guarding this one, others are probably guarding that one, too.”

“We need another way in,” Maybeck said.

“How do you guys feel about getting filthy dirty?” Finn asked.

He led them through the crowded parking lot, staying as far away from the pirates as possible. As they neared a full-length mirror at the Cast Member entrance into the Park, a foul smell overpowered them. A message on the mirror read
Make it a magical day for our guests!

* * *

“What the…?” Maybeck said. “Stink…eee!”

“Shh! Keep your voice down,” said Finn. But the constant roar to their right covered their voices. He led them toward that noise: an area just before Cast Members entered the Park, tucked behind a plywood screen with empty cardboard boxes piled in a corner and a large pipe, three feet in diameter, sticking out of the concrete.

“Brilliant!” said Philby as he realized where they were.

Maybeck focused on the pipe. It had a weighted lid and was surrounded by warning signs. “No way,” he said. “You are not getting me down there.”

“That’ll work,” said Finn. “We need you to stand guard. We all have our phones.”

“I wouldn’t count on ours working down there,” Philby cautioned.

“Macbeth,” Finn said, trying to get back at Maybeck for all the nicknames he called him, “will stay up here to keep an eye on the pirates. You’ll text us if you see any change in them, because it may mean trouble for us. Philby and I will try to get to the server room.”

Maybeck said, “So I text if I see something awkward up here. Is that all?”

“No,” said Philby. “You see this red stop button?”

“Kind of hard to miss,” Maybeck said. The plastic emergency button was huge.

“If you hear the system restart, then you hit that button.”

Finn added, “We’d rather not get sucked through the system and spit out into the compactor. It’s up to you to see that doesn’t happen.”

“Could be bad for our health,” said Philby. “As in,
fatal
. The wind generated to suck the trash out of the Park reaches sixty miles an hour in the pipe. That’s almost hurricane speed.”

“Got it,” said Maybeck. “Hit the red button. Kill the wind.”

“Seriously,” Philby said.

“Red button. Easy enough.”

“Okay then,” Finn said to Philby. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” said Philby.

Finn punched the red button. The roar ground to a stop.

Philby lifted the heavy lid and the smell intensified.

“Glad it’s you guys going down there and not me,” Maybeck said, pinching his nose.

“We won’t have long,” Philby warned. “Engineering Base over in the Studios will see a warning that the system’s down. They’ll try a restart before anything else.”

“So…I’ll go first.” Finn’s only other time in the trash system had been a long time ago. Maleficent had been chasing him. He’d been terrified.

He climbed over the sticky edge into the steel pipe, while Philby and Maybeck held open the lid. Maybeck’s face was puckered in disgust as the putrid odors of rotting trash wafted up.

Finn let go and dropped. He fell a few feet, landing in some wet slop at the bottom of a similar-size steel pipe that ran parallel with the surface. A tunnel within the tunnel.

“Out of the way!” Philby said.

The pipe was too small to crouch and stay on two feet. Finn was forced to drop to hands and knees amid the sticky, disgusting goo of old garbage.

He called back coarsely, “You might want to get your flashlight out
before
you put your hands in this stuff.”

Philby dropped in behind him, flashlight on. Finn’s shadow spread before him amid the garbage and debris that adhered to every inch of the pipe—wrappers, crushed cups and cans, chewing gum, rubber bands, grotesque rotting remnants of former meals, banana peels, turkey leg bones, and every kind of plastic container ever made, most of them unrecognizable. The smell only grew worse the farther they crawled. Finn held his breath for as long as possible, but an inhale was inevitable, and when it came, it tasted like he was eating trash.

“I think I’m going to puke,” Philby said from behind him.

“Go ahead. It might improve the smell.”

“By now Base has tried to reset. That’ll take a couple of minutes to be in effect. When Maybeck pulls a second emergency stop they’ll send a team to investigate. We need to be out of here by then. This thing is basically a wind tunnel.”

Philby could recite the statistics, but Finn had experienced the trash pipe. What Philby didn’t seem to grasp was the power of that suction. If the trash bags were moving at sixty miles an hour, the two of them would be also. Some things were better left unsaid. He picked up the pace, though it wasn’t exactly fast going. The slime coating the tube was the consistency of tar. His knees and the palms of his hands stuck to it like a fly to flypaper. Each movement made a sucking and slurping noise.

“Hurry it up!” Philby said.

“I’m trying.”

“It smells like my father’s beef-jerky farts.”

“TMI.”

Finn paused at the first intersection—a pipe ran off to the left. Professor Philby had to take a closer look himself. He shined the flashlight at the walls of the connecting pipe.

“Hair,” he said, pointing out clumps of what looked like steel wool stuck to the surface. “The beauty parlor is close by. The server room is up ahead at the next intersection. It should be a recycling station.”

Finn was going to ask why a recycling station would be connected to a trash system, but he knew better than to challenge Philby. For one thing, Philby’s explanations could run on the long side. Finn slogged ahead, so disgusted with the ooze that he began walking on his elbows rather than sinking his hands into it.

“We’re too slow. We’re taking too long,” Philby warned. And just like that, a
clunk
was heard, like a grumbling in the belly of a beast. The system was restarting.

“Okay, that’s what we expected.” Philby tried to sound calm. His hair stuck to the goo on the walls. “Now, all that needs to happen is for Maybeck to trip the emergency stop again.”

Finn considered trying to send a text, but looked at the layer of tarlike goo on his hands—something they hadn’t considered. Nonetheless, he reached into his pocket for his phone as the wind lifted the hair off his head.

Zero bars: no service.

“Oh, perfect,” he said.

* * *

Maybeck understood his assignment: keep an eye on the two pirates; stop the system if it restarted. Piece of cake. What Philby had only vaguely mentioned was that on-site engineers might seek immediate answers to their trash system shutting down. Despite the casual, playful, magical impression the Parks had on visitors, in truth they were run more like a NASA mission. There were teams of experts to tackle and instantly solve any kind of problem—from the lettuce in a restaurant going brown, to the intricacies of staging the three o’clock parade each day; the evening fireworks; the street bands; the stage shows. There were enough maintenance employees to form a small army. Two of these men were radio-dispatched by Engineering Base to investigate an emergency stop at URS-3—Utilidor Refuse Station #3.

Luckily, Maybeck heard them coming before they saw him. They were complaining to each other about what kind of knucklehead would pull an emergency stop on the trash system. They were just on the other side of the trash area’s plywood barrier as he heard them. He turned, dropped to his hands and knees, and burrowed deeply into the pile of cardboard recycling.

He stared out from his hiding place as the two maintenance guys inspected the door that sealed the trash drop, as well as the electronic box that housed the red emergency stop override.

“I don’t see nothing wrong,” said the shorter of the two. He was thick-boned and heavyset and had a voice like a dog growling.

Philby had said the system would be restarted the first time remotely from Engineering Base. He’d been wrong—a rarity.

“Nah,” said the other, a taller, leaner man. “Some wise guy’s idea of a practical joke.”

The short guy grabbed his radio. “Good to go URS-three. Repeat: green light for URS-three restart.”

“Roger, that,” came a woman’s voice over the radio.

A moment later, Maybeck felt a
thunk
underfoot.

The system had restarted.

* * *

Willa, her DHI riddled with static, moved carefully through the backstage area behind France, taking care to screen herself behind trailers, vehicles, and pieces of staging. Hypersensitive about how she stood out wearing pajamas, she wanted to avoid being seen as much as possible. If kids recognized her, she’d be mobbed and she’d have to role-play as a Disney Host. Another Willa guide—dressed in lederhosen—was currently somewhere in Epcot, which could explain her own current projection problems. Willa’s own hologram would likely improve once Epcot was closed and the regular DHIs were turned off for the night, but she didn’t want to wait. She had a few hundred yards to cover in order to reach the pin-trading station by the fountain. The Return. The most direct route was to join the sea of Park visitors, but the idea terrified her.

She knew that if she looked scared and out of place, she would appear vulnerable: If she looked confident and comfortable, despite the pajamas, she would fit right in. After all, newlyweds went around the Parks in mouse ears and bridal veils. On a scale of 1 to 10, pajamas barely registered.

She briefly hid behind a Food and Wine Festival station, gathering her courage. Then she stepped out and confidently joined the hordes. She was in a courtyard in France, the lake straight ahead. There were shops to her right and a French bakery. Benches to her left. Trees and raised islands of flowers in the center of the oblong, cobblestoned plaza. Music filled the air—pieces of the sound track to
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
. It had an inviting and calming effect. The music surrounded her and made her feel at peace. She loved the Parks when they were open and filled with families and brimming with happiness. Her toes and fingers tingled. Her blue line grew solid—she was pure DHI.

In her euphoria, she failed to look where she was going, and walked right through a raised flower bed, coming out the other side. Some kids recognized her immediately and approached, crowding her, asking for photographs and autographs. She had to agree or risk making an even bigger scene as visitors complained. She posed for some photographs, explained politely that as a hologram she couldn’t sign autographs, and hoped to get away. Camera flashes blinded her. Kids bubbled with enthusiasm.

“Over here!” a mother called out.

Willa looked in that direction—toward the bakery. Above the woman’s shoulder she saw a court jester in a green felt costume and clown makeup. The jester stared at her, but not in admiration. More like a policeman watching a suspect.

As she heard the organized sounds of synchronized marching approach, she knew she was in trouble. Epcot was not a place for goose-stepping soldiers. Twelve costumed cathedral guards appeared from around the corner. Judge Frollo’s guards, she thought.
Overtakers
. They marched straight for her.

“Excuse me,” she said to a group of kids, “but I have to go. I hear those guards will give you candy if you hold onto them and don’t let go.”

The kids squealed and took off, shouting at the guards.

Willa walked quickly toward the bridge leading to the United Kingdom. The rhythmic footfalls stopped as the kids assaulted the guards. Again, she heard her name ripple through the crowd as more people identified her. Things were going badly. What had seemed like such a short distance now felt like miles. Spaceship Earth looked so tiny and distant all of a sudden.

Behind her, a French-accented guard called out, “Clear the way! Clear the path!” Apparently, not all of the guards had been sidelined by the kids.

Disney visitors were too polite: they cleared a path behind her.

Willa glanced back; the guards were gaining ground.

The crowd ahead now grew thicker as the walkway narrowed. She dodged her way through pedestrians, but wasn’t increasing her lead. Behind her, Frollo’s guards continued their relentless pursuit.

Only as she lost her balance and bumped into a baby carriage did she realize the value of her being a DHI. A moment earlier she’d walked through the flower island; she needed to get to
all clear
.

She allowed the music to own her, let it carry her away to where she’d been only moments before; music was the elixir for her; music was her cure. The tingling of her fingers signaled her transformation, and she broke into a sprint, running
through
anything in front of her—people, strollers, it didn’t matter. With her approach, startled guests jumped back, only to have her run right through them. Kids cheered. Adults shouted startled complaints.

But she left the guards behind. No matter how they tried, they weren’t going to catch her. Twice more, she settled and focused on the music. Twice more, she went
all clear
.

Willa passed the Canadian pavilion, still a long way from the Return, but gaining with each step. Her confidence increased: she was going to make it.

The fountain and plaza came into view. Almost there! But then, appearing from around the fountain, a half-dozen Segways—not CTDs, but Park Security.

Her hologram’s blue outline had faded slightly. She couldn’t allow them to scare her, couldn’t allow her DHI to weaken—to become even fractionally mortal. The path split just ahead: directly in front of her, the fountain; to the left, a pathway leading behind Innoventions West, with access to The Land and The Seas. She took this alternate route, hidden from the Security team.

From behind her came the steady
tromp, tromp, tromp
of the cathedral guards.

She reminded herself that she only needed to reach the Return. Willa cleared her thoughts and watched her blue outline grow more solid. If she could trust her DHI she could charge the pin-trading station, grab the Return, and send herself back. So close now.