Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom Part 22

He dropped her hand and whirled to face another castmember. "Is it true?" he demanded, raising his voice, slightly.

"No!" the castmember said, his voice unnaturally loud after the whispers. A nervous chuckle rippled through the crowd.

"Is it true?" he said, striding to the podium, shouting now.

"No!" the crowd roared.

"NO!" he shouted back.

"You don't _have to_ roll over and take it! You can fight back, carry on with the plan, send them packing. They're only taking over because you're letting them. Are you going to let them?"

"NO!"

b.i.t.c.hun wars are rare. Long before anyone tries a takeover of anything, they've done the arithmetic and ensured themselves that the ad-hoc they're displacing doesn't have a hope of fighting back.

For the defenders, it's a simple decision: step down gracefully and salvage some reputation out of the thing -- fighting back will surely burn away even that meager reward.

No one benefits from fighting back -- least of all the thing everyone's fighting over. For example:

It was the second year of my undergrad, taking a double-major in not making trouble for my profs and keeping my mouth shut. It was the early days of b.i.t.c.hun, and most of us were still a little unclear on the concept.

Not all of us, though: a group of campus s.h.i.+t-disturbers, grad students in the Sociology Department, were on the bleeding edge of the revolution, and they knew what they wanted: control of the Department, oustering of the tyrannical, stodgy profs, a bully pulpit from which to preach the b.i.t.c.hun gospel to a generation of impressionable undergrads who were too cowed by their workloads to realize what a load of s.h.i.+t they were being fed by the University.

At least, that's what the intense, heavyset woman who seized the mic at my Soc 200 course said, that sleepy morning mid-semester at Convocation Hall. Nineteen hundred students filled the hall, a capacity crowd of bleary, coffee-sipping time-markers, and they woke up in a hurry when the woman's strident harangue burst over their heads.

I saw it happen from the very start. The prof was down there on the stage, a speck with a tie-mic, droning over his slides, and then there was a blur as half a dozen grad students rushed the stage. They were dressed in University poverty-chic, wrinkled slacks and tattered sports coats, and five of them formed a human wall in front of the prof while the sixth, the heavyset one with the dark hair and the prominent mole on her cheek, unclipped his mic and clipped it to her lapel.

"Wakey wakey!" she called, and the reality of the moment hit home for me: this wasn't on the lesson-plan.

"Come on, heads up! This is _not_ a drill. The University of Toronto Department of Sociology is under new management. If you'll set your handhelds to 'receive,' we'll be beaming out new lesson-plans momentarily. If you've forgotten your handhelds, you can download the plans later on. I'm going to run it down for you right now, anyway.

"Before I start though, I have a prepared statement for you. You'll probably hear this a couple times more today, in your other cla.s.ses.

It's worth repeating. Here goes:

"We reject the stodgy, tyrannical rule of the profs at this Department.

We demand bully pulpits from which to preach the b.i.t.c.hun gospel.

Effective immediately, the University of Toronto Ad-Hoc Sociology Department is _in charge_. We promise high-relevance curriculum with an emphasis on reputation economies, post-scarcity social dynamics, and the social theory of infinite life-extension. No more Durkheim, kids, just deadheading! This will be _fun_."

She taught the course like a pro -- you could tell she'd been drilling her lecture for a while. Periodically, the human wall behind her shuddered as the prof made a break for it and was restrained.

At precisely 9:50 a.m. she dismissed the cla.s.s, which had hung on her every word. Instead of trudging out and ambling to our next cla.s.s, the whole nineteen hundred of us rose, and, as one, started buzzing to our neighbors, a roar of "Can you believe it?" that followed us out the door and to our next encounter with the Ad-Hoc Sociology Department.

It was cool, that day. I had another soc cla.s.s, Constructing Social Deviance, and we got the same drill there, the same stirring propaganda, the same comical sight of a tenured prof battering himself against a human wall of ad-hocs.

Reporters pounced on us when we left the cla.s.s, jabbing at us with mics and peppering us with questions. I gave them a big thumbs-up and said, "b.i.t.c.hun!" in cla.s.sic undergrad eloquence.

The profs struck back the next morning. I got a heads-up from the newscast as I brushed my teeth: the Dean of the Department of Sociology told a reporter that the ad-hocs' courses would not be credited, that they were a gang of thugs who were totally unqualified to teach. A counterpoint interview from a spokesperson for the ad-hocs established that all of the new lecturers had been writing course-plans and lecture notes for the profs they replaced for years, and that they'd also written most of their journal articles.

The profs brought University security out to help them regain their lecterns, only to be repelled by ad-hoc security guards in homemade uniforms. University security got the message -- anyone could be replaced -- and stayed away.

The profs picketed. They held cla.s.ses out front attended by grade- conscious brown-nosers who worried that the ad-hocs' cla.s.ses wouldn't count towards their degrees. Fools like me alternated between the outdoor and indoor cla.s.ses, not learning much of anything.

No one did. The profs spent their course-times whoring for Whuffie, leading the seminars like encounter groups instead of lectures. The ad-hocs spent their time badmouthing the profs and tearing apart their coursework.

At the end of the semester, everyone got a credit and the University Senate disbanded the Sociology program in favor of a distance-ed offering from Concordia in Montreal. Forty years later, the fight was settled forever. Once you took backup-and-restore, the rest of the b.i.t.c.hunry just followed, a value-system settling over you.

Those who didn't take backup-and-restore may have objected, but, hey, they all died.

The Liberty Square ad-hocs marched shoulder to shoulder through the utilidors and, as a ma.s.s, took back the Haunted Mansion. Dan, Lil and I were up front, careful not to brush against one another as we walked quickly through the backstage door and started a bucket-brigade, pa.s.sing out the materials that Debra's people had stashed there, along a line that snaked back to the front porch of the Hall of Presidents, where they were unceremoniously dumped.

Once the main stash was vacated, we split up and roamed the ride, its service corridors and dioramas, the break-room and the secret pa.s.sages, rounding up every sc.r.a.p of Debra's c.r.a.p and pa.s.sing it out the door.

In the attic scene, I ran into Kim and three of her giggly little friends, their eyes glinting in the dim light. The gaggle of transhuman kids made my guts clench, made me think of Zed and of Lil and of my unmediated brain, and I had a sudden urge to shred them verbally.

No.

No. That way lay madness and war. This was about taking back what was ours, not punis.h.i.+ng the interlopers. "Kim, I think you should leave," I said, quietly.

She snorted and gave me a dire look. "Who died and made you boss?" she said. Her friends thought it very brave, they made it clear with double- jointed hip-thrusts and glares.

"Kim, you can leave now or you can leave later. The longer you wait, the worse it will be for you and your Whuffie. You blew it, and you're not a part of the Mansion anymore. Go home, go to Debra. Don't stay here, and don't come back. Ever."

Ever. Be cast out of this thing that you love, that you obsess over, that you worked for. "Now," I said, quiet, dangerous, barely in control.

They sauntered into the graveyard, hissing vitriol at me. Oh, they had lots of new material to post to the anti-me sites, messages that would get them Whuffie with people who thought I was the sc.u.m of the earth. A popular view, those days.

I got out of the Mansion and looked at the bucket-brigade, followed it to the front of the Hall. The Park had been open for an hour, and a herd of guests watched the proceedings in confusion. The Liberty Square ad-hocs pa.s.sed their loads around in clear embarra.s.sment, knowing that they were violating every principle they cared about.

As I watched, gaps appeared in the bucket-brigade as castmembers slipped away, faces burning scarlet with shame. At the Hall of Presidents, Debra presided over an orderly relocation of her things, a cheerful cadre of her castmembers quickly moving it all offstage. I didn't have to look at my handheld to know what was happening to our Whuffie.

By evening, we were back on schedule. Suneep supervised the placement of his telepresence rigs and Lil went over every system in minute detail, bossing a crew of ad-hocs that trailed behind her, double- and triple- checking it all.

Suneep smiled at me when he caught sight of me, hand-scattering dust in the parlor.

"Congratulations, sir," he said, and shook my hand. "It was masterfully done."

"Thanks, Suneep. I'm not sure how masterful it was, but we got the job done, and that's what counts."

"Your partners, they're happier than I've seen them since this whole business started. I know how they feel!"

My partners? Oh, yes, Dan and Lil. How happy were they, I wondered.

Happy enough to get back together? My mood fell, even though a part of me said that Dan would never go back to her, not after all we'd been through together.