The Return: Disney Lands (22 page)

Focusing on making his hands solid, Finn bent and hoisted the sword, the gesture driven by curiosity, not triumph. The crowd misunderstood and cheered loudly.

“Did you see that...” he asked Amanda, “...
ghost
?”

“Ah, yeah. Actually, that’s Emily, a friend of mine,” Amanda said. “You’re going to like
her.”

“S
O YOU
’
RE SAYING YOU SAW ALL THIS
, but Terry didn’t?”

Connected by video on Willa’s tablet, Charlene’s voice was clear, even though her image was not. She’d just come from a shoot for her television show, meaning her hair was
perfect, her makeup was perfect; she was perfect. But her perfect voice expressed only cynical disbelief as she said, “And why is that?”

The four other Keepers sat on the kitchen countertops in
Maybeck’s Aunt Bess’s house, competing for space with pieces of pottery in all stages of completion. The kitchen
cabinets’ glass fronts offered a view to even more artistic mugs, plates, bowls, and cups in a rainbow of colors and an assortment of shapes.

On the counter, the kids nibbled oatmeal cookies that Bess had baked specially for them. Like Mrs. Whitman, Bess supported the Keepers
and believed in their cause.

Finn, bruised and sore from the battle with the cards, kicked his legs back against the cabinet behind him and sighed. The Keepers had ambushed him. He’d gone to Maybeck’s to collect
the second folder, only to find Willa and Philby there as well—along with the video connection to Charlene in Los Angeles. Philby wouldn’t agree to cross Finn back into Disneyland
without a full explanation and group consensus. At the moment, it wasn’t going terribly well. Finn had withheld the most important piece of information, fearing he might hit the resistance he
was now encountering.

“Remember,” Finn said to Philby, “Mom telling us about people who claimed to have time traveled, that they ended up in loony bins? First of all, that’s how you’re
treating
me.” He spoke now to them all. “Second, to answer your question, Charlie, what if memory, my ability to retain events, is being controlled by whoever made this
happen?”

“Finn’s onto something, you guys,” Maybeck said. “I remember nothing about what happened. Zero. Zilch. I climbed onto Jingles, and then Finn was pulling me
off.”

“So?” Charlene again, on the tablet. “Maybe that’s all
there was to it!”

“No. Think for a sec! That’s exactly what happened to Finn the first time he crossed over. Right? He remembered nothing.”

“I love you, Finn. You know that!” Charlene said argumentatively. “Seriously, I want to believe you traveled back in time to a couple days before Disneyland officially opened.
I mean, who
wouldn’t
want to believe that
?
But do you know how deranged
this sounds? Black-and-white? Jumping out of a television and then back in? The next thing you know,
you’ll be telling us you met Wayne and Walt and took a tour of the park before it opened.”

“Not that last part,” Finn said.

The three faces in the kitchen turned in his direction.

“Now this is getting interesting,” Philby said.

“There was a guy our age,” Finn said. “Wearing one
of those flat caps, like in
Newsies
. He was spying on me and Maybeck. Didn’t seem the least bit weirded out by
a pair of black-and-white two-dimensional projections trying to hide beneath the staircase to Walt’s apartment.”

Finn hadn’t just waded into the water. He’d dived in. But he figured it was too late to ease into the truth. Better to make a splash. “He waved us over to him and we
went.” He paused, looked at his friends’ faces. Philby: excited interest. Willa: skeptical fascination. Maybeck: confusion. But Charlene didn’t so much as twitch. Maybe the screen
had frozen. “He asked me—not Terry, me—for the IAV file. He expected me to have it. I handed it over, explaining that Terry’s half hadn’t projected properly. He
didn’t seem to question that explanation, which made
me realize he must be the guy who’d done this. Once we’d returned, Terry and me, I thought about it some more. You know
what’s in those files? Philby?”

Philby’s voice was hushed and reverential. “The first folder was the schematics for the shadow mask cathode ray tube
color
television. But the second folder
involves—get this!—white-light transmission holography, a technology developed
by Polaroid in the late nineteen sixties.” He paused. “Combined, they’re the ingredients
for—”

“Color holograms!” Willa blurted out. “Finn brought this guy the schematics to project DHIs,” Willa said.

“One can’t have black-and-white, two-dimensional projections trying to find Walt’s pen and putting it back where it belongs.”

“You see?” Finn pleaded. “You see how it fits together
and makes sense?”

“No,” Charlene said. So the tablet hadn’t frozen after all, Finn thought wryly. “I don’t want to be the jerk here, and I think that’s what I’m being,
and I’m so sorry, you guys.”

“I was the one there, and I don’t fully believe it,” Finn said. “You have every right to doubt, Charlie.”

“The thing is,” Willa said, “it does make sense. It adds up. Holography was theorized
in 1947 by a scientist working with microscopes. What held up its full development
was...any guesses?...the lack of
color
light waves and multisource projection imaging. Single source, single color light didn’t work.”

“Let me guess,” Philby said. “All it gave you was two-dimensional, black-and-white projections?”

“Dude,” Maybeck said. His whispered exclamation loosely translated as:
I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

Finn cleared his throat. “I was expected there because I was talking to the guy who’d written the thirteen-thirteen clue on my arm. A
much younger
version of the same guy, a
guy basically our age, maybe twenty or twenty-one. A guy who, at that time, was unaware he’d already met me, a bunch of years later, in the Carousel of Progress, or that he’d drawn a
pen on my arm.”

He paused, allowing it to sink in. Of the faces focused on him, only Philby was already smiling. Only Philby knew where this was headed.

Finn took a deep breath, lifted his chin slightly, and stated unequivocally: “I was talking to Wayne Kresky.”

J
ESS SAT WITH SEVERAL ADULTS
around
a long conference table in a windowless room. The door was both closed
and locked.

To her left was a well-known Disneyland art designer. To her right, a guy in his late twenties in jeans and trendy glasses; he looked like a young Bono, from U2. Jess thought she recognized
others—maybe the pioneer computer guy whose name she couldn’t remember. Another looked an awful lot like a famous film
director. Those gathered either worked for the company or served
on its board. The woman pretending to be Peggy had made it clear the Tink Tank was not for outsiders.

Jess had been invited to the meeting by a text sent anonymously:

The meeting was chaired by a woman in her forties. She spoke confidently and warmly. No names were
used. Nor was there mention of Jess’s addition to the group. Jess caught herself
clenching her hands tightly to remind herself this was actually happening. She was sitting here with famous people, the newest member of a secret think tank.

What?!!

“We have a serious development to discuss that’s not on the agenda. Consider it new business,” the chairwoman said. “Compelling video evidence
shows that two of our
original DHIs were recently in the park in an unauthorized capacity. Even more troublingly, additional evidence appears to support the idea that the insurgents have returned in an organized
capacity.” She paused. Jess kept all expression off her face as she watched the others at the table; they showed deep concern. But to their credit, no one gasped or tried to add drama
to the
situation.

“Insurgents,” Jess said, “as in Overtakers?”

The chairwoman chose not to respond. “I would like to address the task of discipline and, perhaps more importantly, what if anything we can do to round up and subordinate the
insurgents.”

A hand went up. “Does this have anything to do with the unauthorized activity in Walt’s apartment?” he asked.

“Everything,” the
chairperson answered. “The two problems appear to be one and the same.”

Jess felt sick to her stomach: they knew everything! Was that why she was here? Were they going to try to use her to spy on her friends?

“Young lady?” It took Jess a moment to realize she was the one being addressed. She nodded. “Is there now, or has there ever been, anything in your dreams to suggest the
recurrence
of this...unrest?”

There it was, out on the table:
in your dreams
. Yet, no one seemed surprised to hear the chairwoman’s words. Only then did it occur to Jess that these people had likely voted on
her joining the Tink Tank.

She knew better than to lie. Somehow, she was certain that everything spoken in this room would be the truth and would be kept secret forever. “No, ma’am.” She wasn’t
sure what to call the woman. “My darkest dreams—that’s what I call them—have been about Ursula, Maleficent, and my friends. The original DHIs you’re talking about. I
know them. Very well.”

“And what are they up to?” Another woman, the art director. “How are they able to do what they’re doing?”

“Wayne...Wayne Kresky left a message, a code that led them to Walt’s apartment.”

“The
music box,” the computer guy said. “Tesla’s music box.”

“Who?” Jess asked.

“Nikola Tesla. A turn-of-the-century electronic genius responsible for the building blocks of much of the electrical engineering we use today. An inventory of Walt and Lillian’s
house goods in 1968 revealed the initials ‘NT’ on the back of Walt’s music box. But the link has stymied the Imagineers for decades.”

“That fits,” Jess said, nodding.

“With?” The art director quirked an eyebrow at her.

“Recent events. Not my dreams. Not exactly. But it fits. Can I tell you guys something?” Jess said, realizing too late that this was the point of a think tank. No one answered, so
she continued. “Two nights ago, the event you’re talking about with the DHIs and the Overtakers...My sister was there.
Amanda. She battled the cards with telekinesis. Finn had returned
as a DHI with Maybeck. Terry Maybeck.”

“Returned from?” the computer guy again.

“It’s a term they use.”

“I’m aware of the term.”

“Of course. Well, get this!” she said excitedly. “First, he crosses over from Orlando to Walt’s apartment. Philby does that. But then, he gets on the carousel and his DHI
vanishes.
It’s like a double crossover. Like
Inception
. A different layer.”

“I’m familiar with the film and the concept,” said the guy she now knew
was
the famous director.

“It has something to do with color television transmission. Philby asked for files on that.”

Several at the table took notes.

“This is all between us?” Jess asked. “Stays between us.”

“Absolutely!” said the chairwoman.

“It has something to do with Walt’s pen. With the first time the Keepers saved the Magic Kingdom.”

Baffled glances passed around the table.

“Can you explain that?” the computer guy said.

“It, the pen, redrew the Magic Kingdom during the first big defeat of the OTs. Without that redraw, the Magic Kingdom would have fallen. And where would we be now if that had happened? Not
here,
that’s for sure! You talk about evidence,” this to the chairperson. “Well, Wayne showed the Keepers—the original DHIs—that there’s a disconnect. In several
photographs, and in one of my dreams, Walt’s pen isn’t where it needs to be if it’s to show up in One Man’s Dream. And if it isn’t there when the Keepers go looking
for it...You see? So, something changed. Something, someone, had to have
put the pen into the mug on Walt’s desk in the first place.”

“That’s a lot to process,” said the film director.

“I know. But the bottom line is, the DHIs, the Keepers, have to get that pen back where it belongs.”