The Return: Disney Lands (13 page)

“I want to believe you,” Jess said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re not telling me something and you don’t sound like yourself.”

“Look, if I tell you, Jess, and anyone asks you about what happened down there, you’ll have to lie. And you don’t want to be part of this. Right?”

“So what, you’re protecting me now?”

“I’m trying to, yes.”

“If you’re protecting me, something bad happened.”

Amanda said nothing.

“What about the archives?”

Nothing.

“So you’re not going to tell me anything? This is me, Mandy!”

Nothing.

“You’re mad at me for not going.” Jess sounded sick. She sat back blindly, dropping down onto the bed. “We do everything together,
but I didn’t do this, and
you’re mad.”

“That’s not true.”

“You pushed! Oh my gosh, you pushed! That’s why you’re so tired. How did I miss that?”

“Stop. Please, Jess. Just stop.”

“I care about you!”

“This is what you wanted. You need to think about that.”

Amanda undressed, putting on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. She climbed into bed and rolled over, giving Jess her
back. “Go to sleep,” she said softly.

“Just because Finn can’t let go doesn’t mean you have to hold on, too.”

“Go…to…sleep.”

Jess turned off the light and sat in bed, staring across the room, wondering at the divide that existed there—a space so much bigger than the gap between their beds. For the first time in
their life together, something had separated them. That distance felt
wider than the Grand Canyon, though to be fair, she’d never seen the Grand Canyon.

Confused and stung by her exclusion, Jess’s vision blurred with tears.

“Please?” she whispered.

Amanda didn’t speak, just sighed and tugged the sheet higher on her shoulders.

In the dark, her eyes were wide and sad.

“I hate this,” Jess said. The words were still swimming around her head when
she fell asleep thirty minutes later.

P
HILBY LIKED
F
INN
’
S HOUSE
. Mrs. Whitman
had baked
cookies. His own parents could be so annoying, Philby thought, picking a cookie up and taking a giant bite. Not Mrs. Whitman.

They sat in the living room, with its flat-panel TV, comfortable chairs, and view of the street. Finn’s sister was doing homework in the kitchen, so they kept their voices down.

“Finn isn’t going to tell you this,” Philby said to Mrs. Whitman. “Because
of your being a rocket scientist and all—”

“I’m retired.”

“Mom, I couldn’t remember anything after I crossed over.” Finn blurted the words out like a confession.

“And that’s because?” his mother asked.

Philby cleared his throat, and then ate another cookie, his chewing obscuring his words. “We—that is, the Imagineers…Jeez, this is going to sound ridiculous.”

“Try me,” she said.

“Time travel,” Philby spit out. “I know how it sounds! Believe me, I know! But there’s evidence, and you being so smart and all, we…that is, Finn and
me—”

“Finn and I,” Mrs. Whitman corrected.

“Mom!” Finn groaned.

“The Imagineers won’t tell us what’s going on. Not yet, at least. We know they suspect something big. But I think they’re so stuck in ‘reality’ that they
can’t admit
to themselves it might actually be possible to time travel.”

“You did make the jump from memory lapse to time travel rather quickly,” Mrs. Whitman said, suppressing a smile.

“You don’t believe us,” Finn said. “I knew this was a stupid idea!” He gave Philby a scornful look. “Figures. I’m still considered a freak by the other
Keepers. And they were there. They saw what happened.”

“It’s on video,” Philby said, interrupting Finn’s rant. “A seam in the image, like a filmy, oily crack. Then it’s gone, and so is Finn.” Mrs.
Whitman’s eyes widened at the mention of her son. “Then, minutes later, it happens again, and Finn reappears.” Philby allowed this to sink in. “We’re pretty sure it
has happened before, but Brad—you know Brad—wouldn’t exactly say so. But he didn’t deny it,
either.”

Her eyes darted nervously between the two boys. Then, at last, Mrs. Whitman focused on her son. “This isn’t a joke,” she said.

Finn shook his head. “Please, Mom. Is it possible?”

“Well, yes. Einstein and others have hypothesized about the exceptional qualities of time, and some of those ideas now appear theoretically accurate. It’s been studied and discussed
endlessly. Some
astronomy supports, even seems to prove, the possibility. But that’s all it is. A theory.”

“But if it were physically possible,” Philby said, “it would involve the speed of light, right?”

“It’s theorized in those terms.”

“So being a DHI for instance—being pure light—it might be possible.”

“Look, boys, there are people who will tell you that fortune tellers and psychics are real,
that people can shut their eyes and actually see your future. Others will claim they’ve
been to the future and then traveled back. It’s a common delusion among homeless people and the less fortunate. A handful of well-respected scientists believe a small percentage of these
transients—‘crazies,’ you might call them—are not impaired at all, but are simply trying to explain an experience that
actually took place.” Mrs. Whitman leaned
forward in her chair, pressing her palms together and fixed a stare on her son. To Finn, the silence in the room felt absolute. “Kind of like Jess and her dreams.”

“No,” Finn said. “That is the future. We’re talking about the past.”

“Okay. So, anyway, you have this group of physicists consistently working to accomplish some of the things Einstein
and others theorized,” Mrs. Whitman said, “and another group
claiming they’ve experienced these things for real. Then you have the rest of us. Including me. I appreciate the theory, certainly. But do I think my son has gone into the future?
No.”

“The
past
?” Finn restated. “What about the past?”

Mrs. Whitman smiled patronizingly.

Philby set his third cookie down. “But if we accept
that some people may have time traveled, then couldn’t we explain them seeming crazy, or even being driven crazy, by the fact that
no one believes them?”

“That’s what I was just talking about, Dell.” Mrs. Whitman didn’t sound convinced.

“So what if Wayne figured this out? Let’s say he realized that human beings who time travel go nuts. But DHIs, being made of light? Maybe not so much.”

“You sure get an A for creativity,” Mrs. Whitman said.

“Brad, the Imagineer, couldn’t explain what happened to Finn during those missing minutes,” Philby said. “Can you?”

She went a shade paler. “Not without seeing the video.”

“The Imagineers studied the video. The time code was uninterrupted, Brad said. There were no edits.”

More silence. Above the fireplace, a clock ticked.

“The carousel slowed to a stop once I disappeared. It started up again before I returned,” Finn said. “In the video, I just show up back on the horse.”

“What carousel?” his mother asked. “What horse?”

“I was on King Arthur Carrousel when I disappeared. Riding the golden horse, like Wayne told me to do in the message we found.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake. I’m sorry to say this, Finn,
but I’m beginning to side with your father. Enough is enough.”

“The carousel started up again just before Finn returned,” Philby said.

“Boys! Really!”

“I didn’t remember anything!” Finn said again, more desperately this time. “That protects me, Mom. It keeps me from sounding crazy, from going crazy. Wayne protected
me.”

“You’re borderline, believe me.” Taking a deep breath, the
former rocket scientist addressed Philby, appealing to the computer geek’s scientific mind. “It’s
possible, even probable, that upstream and downstream data are handled differently. Upstream, when Finn crosses over, is less dangerous to a server than is incoming data. So you go out clean; you
do whatever you do as DHIs; but then your data are scrubbed for viruses and malware upon your return.”

“Affecting memory!” Phiby said.

“Precisely. Corporations take antivirus measures extremely seriously these days. Including Disney. What if data not matching the original outgoing video stream is clipped and deleted from
the incoming data stream when Finn returns? That data could represent anything learned, seen, heard, gained.”

“I get that, but the thing is, he remembers crossing
over, just not the carousel part.”

“Could that have been Wayne’s intention? It doesn’t mean Finn time traveled.” Mrs. Whitman threw her hands up in exasperation. “People don’t time
travel!”

“So Wayne found a way to make him invisible or something like that?” Philby sounded fairly convinced.

“For as smart as you both are, you’re missing the point,” Finn said.

“Which is?” his mother
asked.

“If we accept the idea of antivirus software scrubbing extra data,” Finn said to his mother, “or the notion that I went invisible,” to Philby, “then what explains
this?”

He pulled up his shirt sleeve, displaying the hastily drawn fountain pen on his forearm. The image had faded, but its lines were still visible in the clear daylight. “This was here when
the missing minutes were
over.”

Mrs. Whitman reached out and gently ran her thumb across Finn’s skin. It was like she didn’t believe the drawing was actually there.

“It’s Walt’s pen,” Finn said. He’d spoken the words so often, but they had never sounded more sincere. His mother knew the history and importance of the pen.

She nodded faintly, suddenly on the verge of tears.

“A message,” Finn said.

His
mother nodded again, closer than ever to crying. Worried for her son. “I don’t know what to believe.”

“How can my memories not get through, but a drawing of a pen does? It doesn’t make sense, does it, Mom?”

Mrs. Whitman shook her head gently and then looked up at her son, tears welling in her eyes. “Oh, it makes all sorts of sense,” she said, “just not the kind you want it
to.”

Her voice dropped; she spoke so softly that both boys leaned in to hear. “You know what a psychologist would say? She’d say you are so desperate to win back the support of your
friends, so eager to prolong a fantasy life that is all but over, that you’ve convinced yourself you didn’t make this up.”

Finn sat back, stunned. “What? Mom?”

“You believe us,” Philby said, pushing her. “I know
you do.”

“I know you boys wouldn’t lie to me.” She looked at her son for a long moment. “Not consciously. But that’s not the same thing as believing you.”

“Humor me, Mom. Indulge my fantasy and accept that I time traveled. Make it a story in your head—I don’t care how. Just explain how this pen ended up drawn onto my
arm.”

He’d won a faint smile from her. “A story, okay.”

“Thank
you,” Philby said softly.

“Whoever drew that pen wanted to send a message,” she said. “He or she knew the pen would mean something to you, that it’s significant. That you, Finn, are focused on
getting it back onto Walt’s desk so that you can find it forty years later and save the day.” She shot her son a look. Could he hear how ridiculous this all sounded? Then her voice
turned solemn,
like a judge commuting a life sentence. “Of course, it’s also an invitation. There’s an obvious reaction to the pen.”

“Which is?” Finn and Philby nearly spoke in unison.

“The next time you cross over,” she said to her son, granting him permission to continue the experiment, the tears finally slipping down her cheeks, “you need to carry your own
message on the other arm.”