Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow (good story books to read .txt) 📕

the sunset from a hammock, arms around each other, the Park spread out before us like a lighted toy village.

Now the beach was deserted, the Wedding Pavilion silent. I felt suddenly cold though I was sweating freely. So cold.

Dreamlike, I walked into the lake, water filling my shoes, logging my pants, warm as blood, warm on my chest, on my chin, on my mouth, on my eyes.

I opened my mouth and inhaled deeply, water filling my lungs, choking and warm. At first I sputtered, but I was in control now, and I inhaled again. The water shimmered over my eyes, and then was dark.


I woke on Doctor Pete's cot in the Magic Kingdom, restraints around my wrists and ankles, a tube in my nose. I closed my eyes, for a moment believing that I'd been restored from a backup, problems solved, memories behind me.

Sorrow knifed through me as I realized that Dan was probably dead by now, my memories of him gone forever.

Gradually, I realized that I was thinking nonsensically. The fact that I remembered Dan meant that I hadn't been refreshed from my backup, that my broken brain was still there, churning along in unmediated isolation.

I coughed again. My ribs ached and throbbed in counterpoint to my head. Dan took my hand.

"You're a pain in the ass, you know that?" he said, smiling.

"Sorry," I choked.

"You sure are," he said. "Lucky for you they found you -- another minute or two and I'd be burying you right now."

No

, I thought, confused. They'd have restored me from backup

. Then it hit me: I'd gone on record refusing restore from backup after having it recommended by a medical professional. No one would have restored me after that. I would have been truly and finally dead. I started to shiver.

"Easy," Dan said. "Easy. It's all right now. Doctor says you've got a cracked rib or two from the CPR, but there's no brain damage."

"No additional

brain damage," Doctor Pete said, swimming into view. He had on his professionally calm bedside face, and it reassured me despite myself.

He shooed Dan away and took his seat. Once Dan had left the room, he shone lights in my eyes and peeked in my ears, then sat back and considered me. "Well, Julius," he said. "What exactly is the problem? We can get you a lethal injection if that's what you want, but offing yourself in the Seven Seas Lagoon just isn't good show. In the meantime, would you like to talk about it?"

Part of me wanted to spit in his eye. I'd tried to talk about it and he'd told me to go to hell, and now he changes his mind? But I did want to talk.

"I didn't want to die," I said.

"Oh no?" he said. "I think the evidence suggests 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 shutting out the last year of my best friend's life. Rescue myself from the stinking pit I'd sunk 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 something. Does that mean I'm nuts?"

"Oh, probably," Doctor Pete said, 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 my 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 saying so, just in case. We have a backup of you on file -- I'd hate to have to delete it."

"Yes," I said. "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 said. "It's on file and I'm a happy man. Now, are you nuts? Probably. A little. Nothing a little counseling and some R&R wouldn't fix, if you want my opinion. I could find you somewhere if you want."

"Not yet," I said. "I appreciate the offer, but there's something else I have to do first."

===


Dan took me back to the room and put me to bed with a transdermal soporific that knocked me out for the rest of the day. When I woke, the moon was over the Seven Seas Lagoon and the monorail was silent.

I stood on the patio for a while, thinking about all the things this place had meant to me for more than a century: happiness, security, efficiency, fantasy. All of it gone. It was time I left. Maybe back to space, find Zed and see if I could make her happy again. Anywhere but here. Once Dan was dead -- God, it was sinking in finally -- I could catch a ride down to the Cape for a launch.

"What's on your mind?" Dan asked from behind me, startling me. He was in his boxers, thin and rangy and hairy.

"Thinking about moving on," I said.

He chuckled. "I've been thinking about doing the same," he said.

I smiled. "Not that way," I said. "Just going somewhere else, starting over. Getting away from this."

"Going to take the refresh?" he asked.

I looked away. "No," I said. "I don't believe I will."

"It may be none of my business," he said, "but why the fuck not? Jesus, Julius, what're you afraid of?"

"You don't want to know," I said.

"I'll be the judge of that."

"Let's have a drink, first," I said.

Dan rolled his eyes back for a second, then said, "All right, two Coronas, coming up."

After the room-service bot had left, we cracked the beers and pulled chairs out onto the porch.

"You sure you want to know this?" I asked.

He tipped his bottle at me. "Sure as shootin'," he said.

"I don't want refresh because it would mean losing the last year," I said.

He nodded. "By which you mean 'my last year,'" he said. "Right?"

I nodded and drank.

"I thought it might be like that. Julius, you are many things, but hard to figure out you are not. I have something to say that might help you make the decision. If you want to hear it, that is."

What could he have to say? "Sure," I said. "Sure." In my mind, I was on a shuttle headed for orbit, away from all of this.

"I had you killed," he said. "Debra asked me to, and I set it up. You were right all along."

The shuttle exploded in silent, slow moving space, and I spun away from it. I opened and shut my mouth.

It was Dan's turn to look away. "Debra proposed it. We were talking about the people I'd met when I was doing my missionary work, the stone crazies who I'd have to chase away after they'd rejoined the Bitchun Society. One of them, a girl from Cheyenne Mountain, she followed me down here, kept leaving me messages. I told Debra, and that's when she got the idea.

"I'd get the girl to shoot you and disappear. Debra would give me Whuffie -- piles of it, and her team would follow suit. I'd be months closer to my goal. That was all I could think about back then, you remember."

"I remember." The smell of rejuve and desperation in our little cottage, and Dan plotting my death.

"We planned it, then Debra had herself refreshed from a backup -- no memory of the event, just the Whuffie for me."

"Yes," I said. That would work. Plan a murder, kill yourself, have yourself refreshed from a backup made before the plan. How many times had Debra done terrible things and erased their memories that way?

"Yes," he agreed. "We did it, I'm ashamed to say. I can prove it, too -- I have my backup, and I can get Jeanine to tell it, too." He drained his beer. "That's my plan. Tomorrow. I'll tell Lil and her folks, Kim and her people, the whole ad-hoc. A going-away present from a shitty friend."

My throat was dry and tight. I drank more beer. "You knew all along," I said. "You could have proved it at any time."

He nodded. "That's right."

"You let me. . ." I groped for the words. "You let me turn into. . ." They wouldn't come.

"I did," he said.

All this time. Lil and he, standing on my

porch, telling me I needed help. Doctor Pete, telling me I needed refresh from backup, me saying no, no, no, not wanting to lose my last year with Dan.

"I've done some pretty shitty things in my day," he said. "This is the absolute worst. You helped me and I betrayed you. I'm sure glad I don't believe in God -- that'd make what I'm going to do even scarier."

Dan was going to kill himself in two days' time. My friend and my murderer. "Dan," I croaked. I couldn't make any sense of my mind. Dan, taking care of me, helping me, sticking up for me, carrying this horrible shame with him all along. Ready to die, wanting to go with a clean conscience.

"You're forgiven," I said. And it was true.

He stood.

"Where are you going" I asked.

"To find Jeanine, the one who pulled the trigger. I'll meet you at the Hall of Presidents at nine a.m.."

===


I went in through the Main Gate, not a castmember any longer, a Guest with barely enough Whuffie to scrape in, use the water fountains and stand in line. If I were lucky, a castmember might spare me a chocolate banana. Probably not, though.

I stood in the line for the Hall of Presidents. Other guests checked my Whuffie, then averted their eyes. Even the children. A year before, they'd have been striking up conversations, asking me about my job here at the Magic Kingdom.

I sat in my seat at the Hall of Presidents, watching the short film with the rest, sitting patiently while they rocked in their seats under the blast of the flash-bake. A castmember picked up the stageside mic and thanked everyone for coming; the doors swung open and the Hall was empty, except for me. The castmember narrowed her eyes at me, then recognizing me, turned her back and went to show in the next group.

No group came. Instead, Dan and the girl I'd seen on the replay entered.

"We've closed it down for the morning," he said.

I was staring at the girl, seeing her smirk as she pulled the trigger on me, seeing her now with a contrite, scared expression. She was terrified of me.

"You must be Jeanine," I said. I stood and shook her hand. "I'm Julius."

Her hand was cold, and she took it back and wiped it on her pants.

My castmember instincts took over. "Please, have a seat. Don't worry, it'll all be fine. Really. No hard feelings." I stopped short of offering to get her a glass of water.

Put her at her ease

, said a snotty voice in my head. She'll make a better witness. Or make her nervous, pathetic -- that'll work, too; make Debra look even worse

.

I told the voice to shut up and got her a cup of