Part 69 (1/2)
Pop-quiz: Your empire is crumbling around your ears. Your supporters are hospitalized by jackboot thugs for sticking up for you.
The lawsuits are mounting and fly-by-night MBAs have determined to use your non-profit, info-hippie ride project to get right by embarking on 20 years of litigation.
What do you do?
Well, if you're like Perry Gibbons, Lester Banks and Hilda Hammersen, you go out into the backyard and throw a ball around for a while, then you have a big cuddle and head inside.
The pictures shown here were captured by a neighbor of the cult leaders last night, at their palatial condos in Hollywood, Florida.
The three are ring-leaders of the loose-knit organization that manages the ”rides” that dot ten cities in America and are present in fifty cities in Brazil. Their project came to national attention when Disney brought suit against them, securing injunctions against the rides that resulted in riots and bloodshed.
One supporter of the group, the outspoken ”Death Waits,” a former Disney employee, has been hospitalized for over a week following a savage beating that he claims resulted from his Internet posting about the unhealthy obsession Disney executive Samuel R.D. Page (see previous coverage) bore for the ride.
Everyone needs to unwind now and then, but sources at the hospital where Death Waits lies abed say that he has had no visits from the cult leaders since he took his beating in their service.
No doubt these three have more important things to do -- like play catch.
Suzanne said, ”Look, you can't let crazy people set your agenda. If you want to visit this Death kid, you should. If you don't, you shouldn't. But don't let Freddy psy-ops you into doing something you don't want to do. Maybe he does have a rat in your building. Maybe he's got a rat at the hospital. Maybe, though, he just scored some stills off a flickr stream, maybe he's watching new photos with some face-recognition stuff.”
Perry looked up from his screen, still scowling. ”People do that?”
”Sure -- stalkerware! I use it myself, just to see what photos of me are showing up online. I scour every photo-feed published for anything that appears to be a photo of me. Most of it's from blogjects, CCTV cameras and c.r.a.p like that. You should see what it's like on days I go to London -- you can get photographed 800 times a day there without trying. So yeah, if I was Freddy and I wanted to screw with you, I'd be watching every image feed for your pic, and mine, and Lester's. We just need to a.s.sume that that's going on. But look at what he actually reported on: you went out and played catch and then hugged after your game. It's not like he caught you cornholing gators while smoking spliffs rolled in C-notes.”
”What does that guy have against us, anyway?”
Suzanne sighed. ”Well, at first I think it was that *I* liked you, and that you were trying to do something consistent with what he thought everyone should be doing. After all, if anyone were to follow his exhortations, they'd have to be dumb enough to be taking him seriously, and for that they deserve all possible disapprobation.
”These days, though, he hates you for two reasons. The first is that you failed, which means that you've got to have some kind of moral deficiency. The second is that we keep pulling his pants down in public, which makes him even angrier, since pulling down people's pants is *his* job.
”I know it's armchair psychology, but I think that Freddy just doesn't like himself very much. At the end of the day, people who are secure and happy don't act like this.”
Perry's scowl deepened. ”I'd like to kick him in the f.u.c.king b.a.l.l.s,”
he said. ”Why can't he just let us be? We've got enough frigging problems.”
”I just want to go and visit this kid,” Lester said, and they were back where they started.
”But we know that this Freddy guy has an informant in the hospital, he about says as much in this article. If we go there, he wins,” Perry said.
Hilda and Lester just looked at him. Finally he smiled and relented. ”OK, Freddy isn't going to run my life. If it's the right thing to visit this kid, it's the right thing. Let's do it.”
”We'll go after the ride shuts tonight,” Lester said. ”All of us. I'll buy him a fruit basket and bring him a mini.” The minis were Lester's latest mechanical computers, built inside of sardine cans, made of miniaturized, printed, high-impact alloys. They could add and subtract numbers up to ten, using a hand crank on the side, registering their output on a binary display of little windows that were covered and uncovered by tiny shutters. He'd built his first the day before, using designs supplied by some of his people in Brazil and tweaking them to his liking.
The day was as close to a normal day on the ride as Perry could imagine. The crowd was heavy from the moment he opened, and he had to go back into the depths and kick things back into shape a couple times, and one of the chairs shut down, and two of the merchants had a dispute that degenerated into a brawl. Just another day running a roadside attraction in Florida.
Lester spelled him off for the end of the day, then they counted the take and said good night to the merchants and all piled into one of Lester's cars and headed for the hospital.
”You liking Florida?” Lester called over the seat as they inched forward in the commuter traffic on the way into Melbourne.
”It's hot; I like that,” Hilda said.