Part 9 (2/2)

Lil was working with Suneep, AKA the Merch Miracle. He could design, prototype and produce a souvenir faster than anyone -- s.h.i.+rts, sculptures, pens, toys, housewares, he was the king. They were collaborating on their HUDs, facing each other across a lab-bench in the middle of a lab as big as a basketball court, cluttered with logomarked tchotchkes and gabbling away while their eyes danced over invisible screens.

Dan reflexively joined the collaborative s.p.a.ce as he entered the lab, leaving me the only one out on the joke. Dan was clearly delighted by what he saw.

I nudged him with an elbow. ”Make a hardcopy,” I hissed.

Instead of pitying me, he just airtyped a few commands and pages started to roll out of a printer in the lab's corner. Anyone else would have made a big deal out of it, but he just brought me into the discussion.

If I needed proof that Lil and I were meant for each other, the designs she and Suneep had come up with were more than enough. She'd been thinking just the way I had -- souvenirs that stressed the human scale of the Mansion. There were miniature animatronics of the Hitchhiking Ghosts in a black-light box, their skeletal robotics visible through their layers of plastic clothing; action figures that communicated by IR, so that placing one in proximity with another would unlock its Mansion-inspired behaviors -- the raven cawed, Mme. Leota's head incanted, the singing busts sang. She'd worked up some formal attire based on the castmember costume, cut in this year's stylish lines.

It was good merch, is what I'm trying to say. In my mind's eye, I was seeing the relaunch of the Mansion in six months, filled with robotic avatars of Mansion-nuts the world 'round, Mme. Leota's gift cart piled high with brilliant swag, strolling human players ad-libbing with the guests in the queue area. . .

Lil looked up from her mediated state and glared at me as I pored over the hardcopy, nodding enthusiastically.

”Pa.s.sionate enough for you?” she snapped.

I felt a flush creeping into face, my ears. It was somewhere between anger and shame, and I reminded myself that I was more than a century older than her, and it was my responsibility to be mature. Also, I'd started the fight.

”This is f.u.c.king fantastic, Lil,” I said. Her look didn't soften.

”Really choice stuff. I had a great idea --” I ran it down for her, the avatars, the robots, the rehab. She stopped glaring, started taking notes, smiling, showing me her dimples, her slanted eyes crinkling at the corners.

”This isn't easy,” she said, finally. Suneep, who'd been politely pretending not to listen in, nodded involuntarily. Dan, too.

”I know that,” I said. The flush burned hotter. ”But that's the point -- what Debra does isn't easy either. It's risky, dangerous. It made her and her ad-hoc better -- it made them sharper.” _Sharper than us, that's for sure_. ”They can make decisions like this fast, and execute them just as quickly. We need to be able to do that, too.”

Was I really advocating being more like Debra? The words'd just popped out, but I saw 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 saying,” Lil said. I could tell she was upset -- she'd reverted to castmemberspeak. ”It's a very good idea. I think that we stand a good chance of making 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 soliciting feedback from some of them.”

I felt like I was swimming in mola.s.ses. At the rate that the Liberty Square ad-hoc moved, we'd be holding formal requirements reviews while Debra's people tore down the Mansion around us. So I tried a different tactic.

”Suneep, you've been involved in some rehabs, right?”

Suneep nodded slowly, with a cautious expression, a nonpolitical animal being drawn into a political discussion.

”Okay, so tell me, if we came to you with this plan and asked you to pull together a production schedule -- 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 smiled primly. She'd dealt with Imagineering before.

”About five years,” he said, almost instantly.

”Five years?” I squawked. ”Why five years? Debra's people overhauled the Hall in a month!”

”Oh, wait,” he said. ”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, skilled labor, three s.h.i.+fts around the clock.”

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