Part 68 (1/2)

Death was deep into the story now. The Brazilians had forked off their own ride -- they'd had their own New Work culture, too, centered in the favelas, so they had different stories to tell. Some of the ride operators imported a few of their scenes, tentatively, and some of the ride fans were recreating the Brazil scenes on their own pa.s.ses through the ride.

It was all in there, if you knew where to look for it, and the best part was, no one had written it. It had written itself. The collective judgement of people who rode through had turned chaos into coherence.

Or had it? The message-boards were rife with speculation that The Story had been planted by someone -- maybe the ride's creators, maybe some clan of riders -- who'd inserted it deliberately. These discussions bordered on the metaphysical: what was an ”organic” ride decision? It made Death Waits's head swim.

The thing that was really doing his head in, though, was the Disney stuff. Sammy -- he couldn't even think of Sammy without a sick feeling in his stomach, cras.h.i.+ng waves of nausea that transcended even his narcotic haze -- Sammy was making these grotesque parodies of the ride. He was pus.h.i.+ng them out to the world's living rooms. Even the deleted rides from the glory days of the goth Fantasyland, in time-limited miniature. If he'd still been at Disney Parks, he would have loved this idea. It was just what he loved, the knowledge that he was sharing experience with his people around the world, part of a tribe even if he couldn't see them.

Now, in the era of the ride, he could see how dumb this was. How thin and shallow and commercial. Why should they have to pay some giant evil corporation to convene their community?

He kept trying to write about The Story, kept failing. It wouldn't come. But Sammy -- he knew what he wanted to say about Sammy. He typed until they sedated him, and then typed some more when he woke up. He had old emails to refer to. He pasted them in.

After three days of doing this, the lawyer came back. Tom Levine was dressed in a stern suit with narrow lapels and a tie pierced with some kind of frat pin. He wasn't much older than Death, but he made Death feel like a little kid.

”I need to talk to you about your Internet activity,” he said, sitting down beside him. He'd brought along a salt-water taffy a.s.sortment bought from the roadside, cut into double-helix molecules and other odd biological forms -- an amoeba, a skeleton.

”OK?” Death said. They'd switched him to something new for the pain that day, and given him a rocker-switch he could use to drizzle it into his IV when it got bad. He'd hit it just before the lawyer came to see him and now he couldn't concentrate much. Plus he wasn't used to talking. Writing online was better. He could write something, save it, go back and re-read it later and clean it up if it turned out he'd gone off on a stoned ramble.

”You know we're engaged in some very high-stakes litigation here, right, Darren?”

He hated it when people called him Darren.

”Death,” he said. His toothless lisp was pathetic, like an old wino's.

”Death, OK. This high-stakes litigation needs a maximum of caution and control. This is a fifteen-year journey that ends when we've broken the back of the company that did this to you. It ends when we take them for every cent, bankrupt their executives, take their summer homes, freeze their accounts. You understand that?”

Death hadn't really understood that. It sounded pretty tiring. Exhausting. Fifteen years. He was only nineteen now. He'd be thirty-four, and that was only if the lawyer was estimating correctly.

”Oh,” he said.

”Well, not that you're going to have to take part in fifteen years'

worth of this. It's likely we'll be done with your part in a year, tops. But the point is that when you go online and post material that's potentially harmful to this case --”

Death closed his eyes. He'd posted the wrong thing. This had been a major deal when he was at Disney, what he was and wasn't allowed to post about -- though in practice, he'd posted about everything, sticking the private stuff in private discussions.

”Look, you can't write about the case, or anything involved with it, that's what it comes down to. If you write about that stuff and you say the wrong thing, you could blow this whole suit. They'd get away clean.”

Death shook his head. Not write about it at *all*?

”No,” he said. ”No.”

”I'm not asking you, Death. I can get a court order if I have to. This is serious -- it's not some funny little game. There are billions on the line here. One wrong word, one wrong post and *pfft*, it's all over. And nothing in email, either -- it's likely everything you write is going to go through discovery. Don't write anything personal in any of your mail -- nothing you wouldn't want in a court record.”

”I can't do that,” Death said. He sounded like a f.u.c.king r.e.t.a.r.d, between talking through his mashed mouth and talking through the tears. ”I can't. I live in email.”

”Well, now you'll have a reason to go outside. This isn't up for negotiation. When I was here last, I thought I made the seriousness of this case clear to you. I'm frankly amazed that you were immature and irresponsible enough to write what I've read.”

”I can't --” Death said.