Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Prologue

 I lived long enough to see the cure for death; to see the rise of the BitchunSociety, to learn ten languages; to compose three symphonies; to realize myboyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World; to see the death ofthe workplace and of work.I never thought I'd live to see the day when Keep A-Movin' Dan woulddecide to deadhead until the heat death of the Universe.Dan was in his second or third blush of youth when I first met him,sometime late-XXI. He was a rangy cowpoke, apparent 25 or so, allrawhide squint-lines and sunburned neck, boots worn thin and infinitelycomfortable. I was in the middle of my Chem thesis, my fourth Doctorate,and he was taking a break from Saving the World, chilling on campus inToronto and core-dumping for some poor Anthro major. We hooked up atthe Grad Students' Union—the GSU, or Gazoo for those who knew—on abusy Friday night, spring-ish. I was fighting a coral-slow battle for a stool atthe scratched bar, inching my way closer every time the press of bodiesshifted, and he had one of the few seats, surrounded by a litter of cigarettejunk and empties, clearly encamped.Some duration into my foray, he cocked his head at me and raised a sunbleached eyebrow. "You get any closer, son, and we're going to have to geta pre-nup."I was apparent forty or so, and I thought about bridling at being calledson, but I looked into his eyes and decided that he had enough realtime thathe could call me son anytime he wanted. I backed off a little andapologized.He struck a cig and blew a pungent, strong plume over the bartender'shead. "Don't worry about it. I'm probably a little over accustomed topersonal space."I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard anyone on-world talk aboutpersonal space. With the mortality rate at zero and the birth-rate at non-zero,the world was inexorably accreting a dense carpet of people, even with themigratory and deadhead drains on the population. "You've been jaunting?"I asked—his eyes were too sharp for him to have missed an instant'sexperience to deadheading.He chuckled. "No sir, not me. I'm into the kind of macho shitheaderythat you only come across on-world. Jaunting's for play; I need work. " Thebar-glass tinkled a counterpoint.I took a moment to conjure a HUD with his Whuffie score on it. I had toresize the window—he had too many zeroes to fit on my standard display. Itried to act cool, but he caught the upwards flick of my eyes and then theirinvoluntary widening. He tried a little aw-shucksery, gave it up and let aprideful grin show."I try not to pay it much mind. Some people, they get overly grateful. "He must've seen my eyes flick up again, to pull his Whuffie history. "Wait,don't go doing that—I'll tell you about it, you really got to know."Damn, you know, it's so easy to get used to life without hyperlinks.You'd think you'd really miss 'em, but you don't."And it clicked for me. He was a missionary—one of those fringedwellers who act as emissary from the Bitchun Society to the benightedcorners of the world where, for whatever reasons, they want to die, starve,and choke on petrochem waste. It's amazing that these communities survivemore than a generation; in the Bitchun Society proper, we usually outliveour detractors. The missionaries don't have such a high success rate—youhave to be awfully convincing to get through to a culture that's alreadysuccessfully resisted nearly a century's worth of propaganda—but whenyou convert a whole village, you accrue all the Whuffie they have to give.More often, missionaries end up getting refreshed from a backup after theyaren't heard from for a decade or so. I'd never met one in the flesh before."How many successful missions have you had?" I asked."Figured it out, huh? I've just come off my fifth in twentyyears—counterrevolutionaries hidden out in the old Cheyenne MountainNORAD site, still there a generation later. " He sandpapered his whiskerswith his fingertips. "Their parents went to ground after their life's savingsvanished, and they had no use for tech any more advanced than a rifle.Plenty of those, though."