Authors: Ridley Pearson
W
ANDA ALCOTT PRODUCED
a sizable set of keys from her purse and unlocked the door to the soundstage.
If she was Wayne’s daughter, it wasn’t immediately noticeable. She had auburn hair, a pleasant face, and vivid green eyes. She was wearing loose brown pants, a scoop-neck top, and a black sweater. Her earrings were silver cursive letter
D
s, the first letter of the trademark Disney logo. Finn had never seen a pair like them. Though her physical presence was anything but that of an eighty-year-old man, she had the same self-assurance as her father. This, among other things, convinced Finn she might be telling the truth about being Wayne’s daughter.
It was the keys that actually sold him: who else but a friend or relative of Wayne’s could possess a ring of so many keys, one of which opened the door to Soundstage B?
And even though his brain processed these qualities about her, making every effort to convince him of her legitimacy, he wasn’t about to go through the door. He advised the other Kingdom Keepers to stay put.
“One of us will go first,” he said. “We don’t all go at once.”
“But this is why we came here,” Philby protested. “Besides, it’s far safer inside. Security could come along at any time.”
“Speaking of time,” Willa added, “we’ve lost a bunch. The Transportation Center shuts down in just over an hour. Whatever we’re supposed to be doing here, we’d better get to it.”
“It could be a trap,” Finn reminded her.
“She does look like him,” said Maybeck, the artist. “Her chin and eyes are the same.”
Wanda’s face warmed. “I’ll tell you what,” she said, working the door’s key off the ring and then returning the ring to her purse. “Finn, if you’ll give the paper box to Philby, my work is done here.” She offered him the key to the soundstage. “Jessica isn’t the only one who has vivid dreams. My father has had some powerful and unusual dreams for decades. Dreams that lead him to unusual discoveries. He constructed this box the day before he went missing. He drew the images. He’d told me about Jessica’s ability to see the future on the same day he gave me the box. Because of this, I know it means something. I showed it to her earlier this evening, and she said to show it to Philby. If I’ve accomplished that, then you can have the key and I can go if you like.”
“No,” said Charlene. “I think you should stay.”
“I agree,” said Willa.
Finn groaned.
“What if it was
your
father?” said Willa. “If we can help her then we should.”
“We’re already trying to help,” Finn pointed out. “That’s why we’re here.”
“Wayne is counting on you, on all of you—” Wanda said. “On all of
us
to save the parks. His concern is always for the parks first, and his own safety second. The Overtakers want the parks to themselves. He has taken so many risks over the years.”
“We need to get inside,” Philby said anxiously. “It’s not safe out here. There are no security cameras inside. What they shoot inside is classified, like the DHI work. It would be a lot safer.”
“He’s right,” Wanda Alcott said. “Security doesn’t have keys to Soundstage B, the work done here being classified. Once inside, you’ll be safe.”
Finn tensed. He and the other DHIs were the product of the “classified” work she referred to.
“Give me five minutes,” he said. “If I don’t come back out, take off.”
“I’m coming with you,” said Maybeck.
When Maybeck made up his mind, there was no use arguing.
“Okay,” Finn said. “Let’s go.”
Finn opened the door and the two went inside. There was a second door, meant to block light and sound when cameras were rolling. Maybeck pushed this second door shut behind them and together they entered the windowless, cavernous building. Maybeck found some light switches. It was an area the size of a big airplane hangar. The ceiling had to be fifty feet high. Hundreds of theatrical lights hung suspended from a steel superstructure. A massive green screen lined the entire length of one wall. In front of that green screen was where Finn and the others, wearing motion sensors, had elaborately acted out all kinds of movements in order for the computers to program the holograms. Seeing the space took him back to the auditions and the weeks of work here that had led up to his becoming a Disney Host Interactive. He’d never known then—none of them had—that Wayne had been secretly planning to cross them over and solicit their help in defeating the Overtakers. It seemed like he was a different Finn now than the kid who had first auditioned here.
“Not so different than when we were here,” Maybeck said.
“Kind of…weird, you know?” Finn said. “Like we never left.”
“Yeah.”
They searched the interior, including the two bathrooms, a small office, changing rooms, and a control room filled with electronics.
Maybeck climbed a ladder well up into the catwalks and rigging above the soundstage. His voice echoed as he called out. “There’s no one here. We’re good.”
They admitted the others.
“We can make this work,” said Philby, exiting from the control room. “The cameras, video, sound editing—it’s all here. All we need is—”
“Don’t say it,” Finn said, interrupting.
An awkward silence hung in the air.
“It’s about the girls, isn’t it?” Wanda said. “They’ve been grounded, so there’s no way to get them out to help you here. But if they were like the five of you…well, that would change things.”
Finn didn’t like it at all that she could know this.
Charlene shot Finn a look that cautioned him not to try to stop her from talking. “It’s that, yes,” said Charlene, “and also that they’ve been put onto park Security’s watch list. There’s no way to get them out of the foster home or into the parks.”
“But if they were DHIs…” said Willa. “If they could cross over along with us…”
Finn bit back his tongue, furious that they were sharing so much with a complete stranger.
“I understand,” Wanda Alcott said. “But please, whatever you do, don’t forget the box.” She addressed this to Philby. “It must be important.”
“I promise to take a look at it,” Philby said.
“How did you get into the park?” Finn asked suspiciously. “How did you get past Security? Tonight? Just now? Why didn’t they stop you?”
“Finn!” Charlene chided. “She’s offering to help us.”
“It’s all right,” Wanda Alcott said. “I’d expect no less after everything my father has told me about all of you. You haven’t exactly had it easy. If you weren’t careful you wouldn’t have made it this far.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Finn corrected. “You’ve misunderstood me. I’m just curious for my own reasons.”
“Because you need a way to get Amanda and Jessica into the soundstage undetected,” she said.
Finn withheld comment, but the surprise on his face gave him away.
“But when can you possibly do this?” Wanda Alcott asked. “The girls are grounded.”
“The woman who runs the foster home—” Willa began.
“Mrs. Nash. Yes, I met her,” Wanda Alcott said.
“—attends Mass every Friday night and every Sunday morning for two hours—nearly three including driving back and forth.”
“But the other girls…all they’d do is have to report them and—”
“They won’t report them,” Maybeck said, “because the other girls won’t be there. They’ve received complimentary sessions at my aunt’s pottery shop—to ‘a program on Friday evenings and Sunday mornings provided to deserving institutions in the Orlando area.’ I’ll be at the shop, keeping them busy and monitoring them.”
“I’m impressed,” Wanda Alcott said.
“We’ve learned to work as a team,” Finn said. “Maybeck talked his aunt into doing this. She doesn’t know the full story, only that she’s helping homeless girls.”
“She has a big heart,” Maybeck said.
“But none of it means anything,” Finn said, “if we can’t get onto the property without being seen. Same goes for Jess and Amanda.”
“If I remember right, my father gave you all employee ID cards.”
“Yeah,” Philby said. “But it’s a long way from either employee entrance to this soundstage. We can wear hats and glasses, but it’s still a pretty big risk.”
“You won’t need the hats and glasses,” Wanda Alcott said. “I can get you onto the property. The girls, too.”
“But how?” Finn asked.
“You’ll need to use your employee passes to get backstage. Name a time, and I’ll meet you at the costume shop,” she said.
Finn hoped for more of an explanation. He didn’t get much.
“Make sure one of you has Maybeck’s employee pass with you. If he’s going to be at Crazy Glaze, he doesn’t need it.”
“We can do that,” Finn said, but his voice revealed his skepticism.
“My father had more than a few tricks up his sleeve,” she said. “It all comes down to trust, Finn. Leave it to me.”
F
INN FELT THE PRESSURE
of time running low as, on Friday evening, he, Jess, Amanda, Willa, Charlene, and Philby entered through an employee gate on the back side of Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Amanda used Maybeck’s employee card to enter; Jess used Wayne’s, provided to her by Wanda Alcott.
The time pressure arose from Mrs. Nash’s schedule. She spent two hours at Mass. It took her a half hour to reach the church in Friday traffic, and she remained at least thirty minutes after the service, praying for the welfare of her girls. That totaled a minimum of three hours she would be away from Nash House—the same three hours the girls of Nash House would be at Crazy Glaze.
But it had taken Jess and Amanda thirty minutes to reach the Studios. With another thirty set aside for their return, that left the Kingdom Keepers only two hours to accomplish what they’d come to do.
Wanda Alcott’s plan to get them inside the Studios required some humiliation. The kids were shown into costume storage and made to dress up in
High School Musical
outfits, either as basketball players or cheerleaders.
“Do we really have to?” Finn said, adjusting a headband.
“Cast members are used to seeing
High School Musical
kids here because of the street show. They won’t think anything of it. The only thing we have to be careful of is—”
“Being in the same place at the same time as our DHIs,” said Philby, interrupting, “because our faces are the same, and we might be recognized.”
“Exactly.”
They divided into the two groups: the DHI/film characters and the
HSM
gang, and entered onto the streets of the Studios. Wanda Alcott went ahead of them, both as a scout looking for the real DHIs, and to unlock the door to Soundstage B ahead of the kids’ arrival.
Nearing Soundstage B, only fifty yards away, Finn was approached by a round, red-faced kid who had a bully’s mischievousness in his beady eyes. This was something Wanda Alcott had not considered: DHI fans. Finn had encountered enough of these kinds of kids at school to know what was coming.
He whispered under his breath so that Jess and Charlene could hear. “Don’t let him try to touch me! He’ll either try to push me or punch me. He’s expecting his hand to go right through.”
“How do we stop him?” Charlene asked. She looked several years younger with her hair in braids and wearing a blue-and-white gingham jumper and red slippers.
“I don’t know,” Finn answered. “Step between us.”
As expected, the boy delighted in seeing what he believed to be a hologram that would serve as a punching bag. He stepped up to Finn, raised his fists and said, “Whatcha got, pal?” He took a swipe, his bunched knuckles coming straight for Finn’s chin.
Finn leaned back, the blow just missing.
The boy staggered, off-balance.
“That wasn’t a very nice thing to do,” Jess said, moving between them.
The boy’s brow furrowed and he stopped, stone still, utterly taken aback.
“Who are you?” the boy asked. He stepped toward Jess. She stepped back, still blocking Finn.
The boy took a step toward her. She stood her ground.
“This DHI is our guide,” she said. “You’ll have to get your own.”
“Jimmy?”
called an adult from down the street.
The boy’s mother
, Finn guessed.
“I’ll just borrow him for a minute,” the boy said in a mean voice.
Finn stepped back. But the boy was athletic. He’d anticipated Finn’s move and actually moved closer to him. He swatted out, grabbing for him. He’d expected Finn to be nothing but light. His face twisted into surprise as he caught Finn’s basketball shorts.
“What the…?” he mumbled.
Finn broke the contact and pushed the boy to the asphalt.
The boy just sat there, dumbfounded. “You’re no DHI,” he said.
“Go!” Finn told the girls. They obeyed, heading away.
“Jimmy?”
his mother called out, concern now filling her voice.
Finn, worried the boy might tell on him, said, “I’m a generation-three DHI, Jimmy.” He reached out his hand. “More human than ever.”
Finn helped the boy up. Jimmy stood slowly, awestruck at touching Finn.
“But how…” the boy said meekly. “I thought…” He couldn’t finish a sentence. “This is…
way cool!
” He reached out while wearing a mask of incredulity, once again trying to touch Finn.
But Finn moved away from the effort.
“James Francis McConnor!”
the boy’s mother shouted. “You come here this minute!”
“I must catch up to my guests,” Finn said. He turned and hurried off.
Reaching Soundstage B out of breath, Finn glanced around trying to make sure no one was watching. There were too many people milling about for him to know. At last it came down to a decision.
He turned the doorknob and opened the door.
Inside, he found everyone waiting.
P
HILBY RAN THE CONTROLS
. Jess and Amanda changed into skintight green leotards and tights that included booties, gloves, and full hoods that covered their heads and faces like ski masks. Patches of green plastic mesh had been sewn into the hoods to provide a way to see out, and to breathe.
Charlene attached the thirty-five wired sensors to each of the girls. The sensors would measure every kind of joint and muscle movement. Then the girls took turns on the green stage in front of the green background as Philby directed them to squat, stand, walk, lie down, run, crawl, dance, and jump. He thought up dozens of combinations of movements as Finn and Willa ran video cameras that captured and recorded, from multiple angles, every move the girls made. The girls made some mistakes and had to repeat their movements, many of them several times.
Philby worked a pair of computers, one recording the video, the other recording the digital output from each of the thirty-five sensors. The computers measured and recorded the similarities and differences between the way each of the girls moved compared to a database of how dozens of other people moved, including all the Kingdom Keepers, each of whom had been part of the database nearly from its inception.
Philby completed the recording with just fifteen minutes to go until Jess and Amanda absolutely had to be headed back to the Nash House. He had a good deal of work yet to accomplish, work that had to be done in Soundstage B, with its phenomenally powerful computers.
“No way I can get this done in time. And we still have all the voice work to do,” he said from his seat in the control room.
“Red alert!”
came the voice of Wanda Alcott, issuing a warning that meant someone—Security?—was heading toward the soundstage.
The kids had practiced their roles for such an event: Willa stood poised, ready to kill the overhead lights; Philby put both computers into sleep mode; Finn and Charlene shut down the stand-alone lights and all the cameras; Jess and Amanda disconnected the main cables from their suits, the umbilical cords that fed the computers. Everyone was intent on hiding.
All the kids scattered, having elected hiding places earlier.
Jess—in the green suits it was hard to tell the girls apart—had difficulty unclipping the large plug at the end of the master cable. Amanda made it off the all-green stage, but Jess was still struggling with the oversize connector. There was no way she could leave the stage so long as that huge cable was attached to her suit.
Finn, who’d hidden behind a wall of plywood panels on casters, watched helplessly, desperately wanting to run out and help her.
Jess lay flat down onto the stage. The green of her suit and the cable blended perfectly with the green of the backdrop and flooring—she all but disappeared.
The lights went dark, and Finn heard Willa scamper to find a place to hide.
Only seconds passed before the door swung open and the lights came on again.
“I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” one of the two night watchmen said. “Do you see anything?”
“The report was someone
hearing
something,” the other man said. “We might as well look around.”
Leaving the door open behind them, the two walked to the center of the soundstage. Only then did Finn, peering out, see that a light on one of the cameras was still glowing. His eyes darted between the camera and Jess, who remained flattened on the green deck, only a matter of yards from where the two men stood.
One of the guards lit up a cigarette.
“You can’t smoke in here,” his partner said.
“Correction: I can’t smoke
out there
. No one’s going to see me smoking in here, unless, I suppose, you’re going to turn me in?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“No problem.”
“Okay, then.”
The smoker remained where he was. The other guard grew restless and headed for the control room. Philby was somewhere in there.
“You know what they use this place for?” the smoker called out. “Those hologram kids.”
“DHIs,” the other called back.
“The kids, yeah. You gotta admit, they look freaking real.”
“I know.”
“They give me the weebies, to tell the truth. I mean, if you want guides, why not just hire real kids?”
“It’s Disney World, you moron. Don’t knock it: it’s a paycheck.” He entered the control room. Finn lost sight of him, concentrating instead on the smoker, who stood less than twenty feet from Jess, his back to her.
She seized the opportunity, crawling on her stomach across the green stage, the cable dragging behind her like a green snake.
The man took another drag off the cigarette and slowly turned in Jess’s direction as he exhaled. If he looked down, he’d be looking right at her.
Finn willed her not to move, not to so much as
breathe
.
The ash from the man’s cigarette broke loose and fell slowly to the floor. His head dropped, his eyes following it.
Finn couldn’t take it. He spotted a group of push pins stuck into the plywood. He withdrew one and threw it across the room. It clattered and rolled.
The smoker turned away from Jess with a start. Finn backed up, deeper into shadow.
“Hey!” the smoker called out.
The other man reappeared from within the control room. “What?”
“Something…I don’t know…over there.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. I’m just saying I heard something.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“So check it out, you doofus. And put out that cigarette before you burn the place down.”
Finn stepped forward and sneaked another look.
The smoker smudged out the burning cigarette against the sole of his shoe. As he did, Jess once again crawled toward the edge of the green stage behind him. She reached the length of her cable and stopped, face down.
The smoker headed in the direction of the sound of Finn’s pin. He searched the area near the door they all had come through. His partner joined him.
“Well,” said the smoker, “I heard something too, but it wasn’t much. How do you want to deal with it?”
“It’s a nonevent. I’ll call it in.” He snagged a radio from his belt as the two men made for the door. His voice could be heard faintly reporting in as they shut the door.
Five minutes passed. “All-clear,” Finn announced in a forced whisper.
“We were probably talking too loudly,” Philby said, once they’d gathered in the control room. “We can do this. We just can’t be so loud about it.”
“We can’t do it tonight,” Finn corrected. “Look at the time.”
To everyone’s surprise, they’d lost nearly a half hour.
“We’re going to be late,” said Amanda. “That won’t be pretty.”
“We can’t be late,” Jess said. “There’s no telling what Mrs. Nash might do. That woman is…well, let’s just say she’s not normal.”
“We made a lot of progress on the imaging,” Philby said. “But there’s more to do, and don’t forget the voice recording. We’ve got to have Sunday if we’re going to pull this off.”
“Then we can’t be late,” said Jess.
“But we already are,” said Amanda. “Unless anyone happens to have a helicopter handy?”
“Maybeck,” Finn said.
They all looked at him.
“We’ve got to get Maybeck to delay the other girls. If they’re late, and if Jess and Amanda arrive at the same time—”
“Then Mrs. Nash won’t know,” said Willa excitedly.
“But the girls will,” Charlene said. “What about the other girls?”
“Jeannie’s the only one who might put up a stink,” said Jess. “The others couldn’t care less.”
“But Jeannie,” Amanda said, “will definitely tell on us.”
“Then you’ll have to bribe her,” said Charlene, as if she knew all about such things.
“How?” said Jess.
“There must be something. Money?”
“No, not Jeannie. All she does is read books from the library. She couldn’t care less about money.”
“Music?” Philby asked. “Movies?”
Amanda said, “I know!” She looked over at Jess.
“Her poster.”
Jess looked at Finn, then at Amanda. “That could work,” Jess said.
“What?” Finn asked. “Whatever it is, we’ve got to do it. We can’t have her wrecking this.”
The two girls giggled. Amanda said, “Are you sure?”
“What?” Finn asked, feeling he was being left out of some joke.
“Jeannie’s poster is of you, Finn. Your Magic Kingdom DHI poster.”
“Me?”
“What if we could promise her she could meet you?” Amanda asked.
“That hardly qualifies as a bribe,” Philby said. “More like a penalty.”
“Thanks a lot,” Finn said.
“Well?” Jess asked.
“If it means your getting back safely tonight, then absolutely,” said Finn.
He glanced over at Amanda. Something felt wrong about agreeing to do this. But he just had.