Kingdom Keepers Abroad

Chapter 1: That's What You Get For Waking Up In Shanghai

Finn Whitman found himself in the Magic Kingdom, in his pajamas. In the past ten years, he'd had enough dreams like this to know that this wasn't a dream, that he'd crossed over as a DHI, but looking around he questioned himself. This was not the Magic Kingdom he remembered. The castle was larger, and pinker than any he'd ever seen before, both at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. In front of him, the hub was more of a garden than the straight-forward circle he was used to, as though someone had thrown trees and flowers down haphazardly in the middle of it. For a moment he was gripped by terror that this was the work of the Overtakers, that somehow they'd managed to destroy the hub, but looking around he realized that while it was different, it wasn't destroyed. Rather, it was purposeful. Beautiful, once he got over the weirdness of it being so different.

A thick haze hung so thickly in the air that Finn, even as a DHI, began to cough. It looked like smoke, a fire? but it smelled different. It was this that gave Finn a thought. He remembered his professor talking about air pollution in China. At DSI they'd learned about the difficulties Shanghai's pollution had given the Imagineers who designed it: the usual no-see-em green had to be changed to a light purple to fit the difference in natural light coming through an unnatural smog.

Shanghai Disneyland. With a start, it all fell into place for him. The strange hub, the castle that towered over him, even in comparison to the magic kingdom's castle back home in Orlando. It was a place he'd read about, learned about in school, had even planned on visiting one day. Not, however, tonight. Or, as he thought back on the day, today, for that matter. If it's nighttime in Shanghai, it must be daytime in the US, right? Finn couldn't remember the time change, but knew it must be big.

His last memory was of falling onto his dorm room bed mid-afternoon, after his Show Writing final at DSI. Disney School of Imagineering, or DSI, was a highly exclusive college for the most talented youth, all being primed for a life of designing and building the next generation of Disney storytelling. Forget trying to apply, the only people who even knew it existed were those who'd been invited to attend.

The school, with its secretive classes and storied history, had been his home for the past four years. He'd only planned to be there two years, before transferring to a more 'broadly applicable' school, as his mother had put it, but he'd found himself hooked. He thought his mother's aversion to it probably had less to do with the school's focus on theme park design and more to do with the fact that it was run by Disney, the same people who'd selected him as a DHI almost ten years earlier.

While becoming a DHI had initially seemed a blessing; a college nest egg and Walt Disney World passes for life, it had turned out to be much more. Finn and the other four DHIs learned later that they'd been selected to cross-over into (wake up in) the Disney parks after dark and bring down the villains. The crossing-over was courtesy of some strange technology Finn doubted anyone truly understood, not even those who'd created it.

Looking around the park, Finn also realized that crossing over was exactly what he was doing here. Once a nightly occurrence so familiar he scarcely remembered a time when falling asleep didn't mean a trip to Disney, he hadn't crossed over in almost four years. The program had been shut down after their chaotic (and rogue) trip to 1955. He missed it terribly at first, but after a while, he'd gotten used to it. He and the other keepers had found other ways to stay close, aided by the fact that, in spite of intending to go to different colleges, they'd all ended up at DSI together. Even though graduation was quickly approaching, they'd all still be together; they had all accepted jobs at various departments within the company. Turns out Disney was more like the mafia than you'd think: once you're in, you're in for life.

Footsteps sounded to Finn's left, toward Tomorrowland, one of the few lands he recognized off the top of his head. The rest were too strange. The whole thing set off nostalgia in his head, a sense of deja vu. It was all too similar to a time ten years ago, his first crossover, 2,000 or so miles away, but it felt further. There was no smiling face greeting him, telling him what to do next. Wayne was dead, long dead now. Now it was up to him to figure everything out, just as it always was. One of the painful side effects of adulthood.

Quickly, Finn analyzed the situation, his years of DHI trial and error had been suppressed, but not forgotten, and now all the hard-learned lessons were flying back to him, like a checklist. Scan the surroundings for potential danger; check. Find the exit; this one was a bit trickier. For one, he didn't know who had crossed him over. Hopefully, it was simply a computer glitch-- no, he corrected himself, it must be a computer glitch. They caught the Overtakers. Killed the leaders. Put the rest away in cages. Though they hadn't been killed, much to Finn's abashed chagrin, any traces of them were scrubbed from the parks. No longer did Halloweentime celebrate the villains taking over; the make-believe of that game lost all its fun when it became a real possibility. There was no more villains merchandise for sale in the stores; with the hope that the less they appeared, the less people would believe in them, and thus the less power they possessed.

Since it wasn't the Overtakers, it was a computer error. The Imagineers, Joe Garlington in particular, had prepared them for a situation like this. They'd drilled the emergency hotline into each of the Keepers brains, until they each could recite it in their sleep, all the while insisting that there was nothing to worry about. "We've learned over the past six years with you all that we should always be prepared for the most unlikely situation." Joe had told them, looking each of them in the eye, after Maybeck had made some sarcastic comment. At the time, they had just gotten back from their not-so-approved foray into the past, and the Imagineers were none too happy about it. Finn had figured it was more a punishment for their bad behavior than a true concern for their safety, but in the light of this latest development he wasn't sure there wasn't more too it.

He turned toward Tomorrowland, ready to follow the footsteps he'd heard to the nearest cast member. He passed through the Gardens of Imagination, down the path to the futuristic land. Above, the crescent moon laughed at him.