Ridley Pearson - Power Play

Willa said, “And the gnome turning around like that?”

Jess read from her notes. “The exact mission was to ‘find a friend around front.’”

“A friend spinning around?” Charlene asked.

“Not spinning,” Philby said, “A friend…turning his back on you.”

“Or hers,” Willa said innocently. “A friend betraying you.”

“Us,” said Maybeck, still fixated on Charlene.

“A red flag,” Amanda said. “The flag was red.”

“A red flag means something you need to notice,” Willa said. “Something you shouldn’t miss.”

“That everyone needs a server,” Philby said, “and that a friend has turned his or her back on us.”

“We’ve been betrayed?” Willa gasped.

Charlene said to Maybeck, “Quit staring at me. Why are you doing that?”

Finn caught himself holding his breath. Maybeck and his big mouth could ruin it all now. Finn caught a look from Philby-he was thinking the same thing: It’s now or never.

Maybeck said, “I’ve just never seen you prettier.”

Willa giggled. Amanda and Jess watched intently as Charlene blushed and said, “Seriously? Terry? What’s with you?”

Maybeck took another step toward her while maintaining constant eye contact. This was Maybeck-the-mouth in action. The self-proclaimed chick magnet trying to prove himself.

“I don’t know if it’s the lighting,” he said, “but you look like an…angel. Like a movie star. Like one of those girls on the front of a magazine-the ‘it’ girl, the girl everyone wants to be. The prettiest, smartest girl in the room…”

“Terry?” Charlene said again, her voice quavering.

He was a single step away from her now as he stopped.

“One memory,” he said, “is all I ask.” He reached up and cupped her head in his hand, his thumb stroking her ear. She tilted her head slightly toward his hand. Her eyes looked sad and happy at the same time.

Charlene, her voice strong once again, said, “I mean, come on!” She pushed Maybeck back with both hands. “You really think that stuff will work on me?”

The other girls erupted in nervous laughter. For a moment they’d seemed so close to a kiss. Amanda was blushing. Jess returned to her sketching, her head down, giggling.

Finn could see it was a face she was drawing-an upside down face-of a boy or a man. She hadn’t put on the finishing touches yet. He couldn’t be sure. But in the back of his mind a small voice asked: Who ?

It was the Keepers’ policy to leave their phones on at night. Parents rarely approved of that policy, and so each of the kids had come up with his or her way to get around the objections. Finn put his into vibrate mode and left it on his side table on a piece of aluminum foil, so that if it vibrated, the aluminum foil would rattle enough to wake him. He was a heavy sleeper. He didn’t know what tricks the other Keepers had come up with, only that if called at night they answered.

He answered his on the fourth metallic buzz as the vibrations lifted the phone and carried it close to the end table’s edge and a possible tumble to the floor.

“What?” He whispered into the phone, having already seen Philby’s photo and name on its screen.

“Problems.” Only Philby could sound like a male librarian at one AM.

Finn rubbed his eyes with his free hand, scrunched his pillow behind him, and sat up in bed. “This had better be good.”

“I know you hate technical explanations, so I’m not sure where to start.”

“Maybe start with the problems.”

“I monitor bandwidth usage, as you know. The same thing Wanda did, but I don’t go hacking Internet hubs. The DHI server. Our DHI server. All it takes is the ISP and-”

“You’re right: forget as much of the technical stuff as possible.”

Philby cleared his throat. “Let’s put it this way: because I have the port address to the DHI server now, I’m able to direct what Park we land in when we go to sleep. You and I can go to the Magic Kingdom, while Willa and Maybeck go to Animal Kingdom. The only catch is the Return. We have to be together for the Return.”

“You woke me for a history lesson? I know all this .”

“Finn, I woke you because we had a spike in traffic volume about ten minutes ago. My laptop wakes on network usage. I have it alarmed. I got woken up by that traffic surge. It was a major hit. A DHI for sure.”

“I thought you controlled that,” Finn said. “I thought we only crossed over when you wanted us to. I don’t get it.”

“Exactly! I do! But if Wayne or another Imagineer wanted us over there, then that’s what would happen.”

“Wayne? You think it’s Wayne?”

“I didn’t know what to think. So I called you. It’s Charlene, Finn. The graphic tag-the hologram’s ID-is Charlene’s.”

For Finn it was almost as if her name was echoing over the telephone line. In fact, it was nothing but a little bit of static. “It would have to be her, right?” he said sarcastically. “The Evil Queen?”

“Wayne’s Kim Possible thing warned us about the server. What if the OTs have control of our server?”

Finn didn’t answer, his heart racing. Only Philby would understand if that was possible.

“I wanted to follow her in there. She’s in Epcot. But I didn’t want to pull a Maybeck and go alone and wander into a trap.” Maybeck’s DHI had once followed a girl around inside the Magic Kingdom only to go missing. He had never showed up for the Return, and the others had crossed back without him. This had left his hologram “stuck” in the Park, and a sleeping Terry Maybeck in a kind of coma in his bedroom. Until his hologram was Returned, the boy had not awakened. The kids now referred to this comatose state in several ways: the Sleeping Beauty Syndrome; SBS; or the Syndrome. Following Maybeck’s mishap, they had instituted the buddy rule. Philby was simply playing by the rules.

“Can you help us get there?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll need to send the others a text in case something goes wrong. You and I cross over, find her, and Return.”

“And if we don’t Return, they’ll need Wanda’s or Wayne’s help to come looking for us. Put that in the text.”

“Okay,” Finn said. “So I hang up and get back to sleep and I’ll see you in Epcot?”

“True story.”

Finn ended the call, sent the group text, and slipped quietly out of bed. He had secretly oiled the hinges on both his closet and bathroom doors so they could be worked in the middle of the night without screeching. The dresser drawers were a little more tricky, so he took his time with them. Fresh socks. Fresh underwear. He dressed quietly and quickly-black jeans, black T-shirt with a pirate skull on the back. A brown hoodie. An old pair of running shoes he’d painted black. He pocketed his phone and wallet, which held a few dollars. Sometimes the phone worked when he crossed over, sometimes not. He crawled back into bed and did his best to settle down, knowing that Philby would have already programmed the DHI server to cross them over into Epcot.

He blamed Charlene’s crossing over on the Evil Queen. It seemed more and more likely that she had put a spell on Charlene. Maybeck’s failing to kiss her loomed large.

The more he thought about everything, the harder it was to get to sleep. He cleared his mind, picturing a dark tunnel with a faint pinprick of light far, far at the end-the same technique he used to go all clear . He watched the pinprick widen ever so slowly. Focused on that tiny speck of light in the sea of black as it grew larger. The train approaching.

And then, there was nothing.

Finn awoke near the fountain in Epcot’s central plaza. The fountains were shut off. In fact, the entire Park was lit by maybe half the available streetlamps. The landing, or arrival zone, for their DHIs was one of the biggest problems with the program. Philby could now control which Park each of the kids landed in, who among them would cross over, and, in a pinch, he could manually Return them from his home computer. But the program transmitted the DHI into a Park’s central feature. In the Magic Kingdom, it was the central hub in front of Cinderella Castle. In Animal Kingdom, the island and the Tree of Life. In Disney’s Hollywood Studios, it was the elevated area beneath Mickey’s Sorcerer’s Hat. Here in Epcot, it was the fountain plaza just beyond Spaceship Earth. In all cases, in all places, it meant their holograms landed in open space. Finn’s limbs tingled as he scrambled across the plaza, reminding him that he was in his DHI state.