The Return: Disney Lands (28 page)

“Why would all five of them go off the grid?” Amanda remained persistent.

Joe sighed,
and put the cap on his pen. “Okay. That’s all. I guess I’ll just have to give you the time to find out.”

“What?”

“You’re suspended from DSI.”

“Excuse me?” Amanda felt like she was about to cry.

“You’re out. Whether that’s temporary or permanent is up to you.”

“Permanent? I am so sorry, Joe! I didn’t mean to—”

“That’s exactly the point, Amanda: You did mean to. Of course
you did. Everything you did was premeditated. That’s the most annoying and telling part of this, quite frankly.
That, and your blatant dishonesty.”

“Ask me whatever you want. I’ll tell you anything!”

“You’ll take a break, young lady.” Joe’s face was like a piece of stone; his eyes were cold. “What you do with that time is up to you. If I were you I would think
about what it is I want
for my future.”

“I don’t want to leave DSI. I’m sorry about everything. They’re my friends, you know? Real friends. The first friends Jess and I have ever really had.”

“Jessica seems to be toeing the line quite well.” Joe stood. Amanda didn’t like that. It implied the meeting was over, that he really wasn’t giving her a chance to argue.
“You’ll do with the next week as you see fit. I
leave it up to you. Please figure out what’s important to you, and then we can talk again.”

Tears gushed down Amanda’s cheeks, despite her best efforts to hold them back. “I didn’t…” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry…Really…Really
sorry.”

“I don’t like this anymore than you do,” Joe said, putting his arm around her and guiding her gently to the door. “You and Jessica are special to me. Important.
I have no
doubt—none whatsoever—that you’ll make the most of these next few days. You’re a smart kid, Amanda. When we meet again, all will be forgiven, and we can both move on. Sound
good?”

Amanda nodded, drawing in deep breaths between sobs.

“Things have a way of working out when we put our minds to it,” Joe said.

“I was just trying to help,” Amanda gurgled.

He patted her
on the shoulder. “Well then, that’s a good place for us to start next week when we talk. Keep that in mind. Let’s start right there.”

“He said I should serve as a kind of DSI ambassador,” Amanda said to Jess later as she packed. “Convince some of the parents that this is a good place for
their kids.”

“Joe said that?”

Her stomach knotted. They didn’t lie to each other, but here she
was doing exactly that. “He said how great it would be to get as many of the Keepers here next semester as possible.
That I was the perfect person to convince them.”

“What if Finn doesn’t want to see you?”

Amanda offered her sister a look. “Since when?”

“Yeah, I suppose. What did he say about them not answering texts?”

“He made me think maybe they’ve been doing something with
the Imagineers that has their phones down.” The lying became easier as she went. A troubling development. She
didn’t like herself right now. She knew Jess wouldn’t like her, either. “I think by sending me back there, he’s planning to let me see them in person. So no
complaints.”

“This has to do with the Legacy, doesn’t it?” Jess asked. “You two talked about Hollingsworth and the Legacy.”

“I swear, I said nothing.” Finally, a speck of truth. She cherished it.

“You’re not mad at me again, are you?” Jess sounded terrified.

“Why would I be?”

“Because they let me into the basement.”

“I’m not supposed to know about that.”

“Tim shouldn’t have told you.”

“Why didn’t you?” Amanda asked, keeping her eyes fixed steadily on Jess’s.

“Don’t get mad.”

“Why
should I get mad?”

“We just worked everything out.”

“We did. And now I get to go work everything out with Wanda.”

“What does
that
mean?” Jess asked.

Amanda blushed. “Nothing. Look, I don’t have some switch that can turn off my feelings! I’m scared for him.”

Jess laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“I’m being completely real here, Mandy. This is honest. No tricks. No secret
messages. I have no idea where they are, where Finn is, why he isn’t texting you. I know as much,
or as little, about the Legacy as you do. Tim passed a file to
you
to get to the Keepers. Not me. You must remember this stuff.”

“Because you’re trying to protect me?” Half statement, half question. This time Jess didn’t take the bait.

“I’m trying to protect all of us, and that includes
Finn and the Keepers.” Jess paused, sighed. “It’s not easy.”

“I have to know,” Amanda said.

“‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’ Matthew 7:7.”

“Since when do you go around quoting the Bible?” Amanda stepped away from Jess, throwing up her hands in complete exasperation.

“I know maybe three quotes, and another three
or four from Shakespeare. So sue me.” Jess twisted her lips as if biting back a laugh. “I mean, they come in handy.”

“You’re mocking me with that verse.”

“I’m trying to warn you to leave it alone, Mandy. Believe it or not, sometimes we just don’t want to know. Think who Finn is. Charlie. Maybeck. They’re more pioneers than
holograms. If you think for even a minute that we know everything
they’ve done, you’re fooling yourself. If they wanted us to know what they were doing now, we would.”

“And if they’re in trouble?” Amanda caught Jess’s eyes, saw again the flare of emotion her friend struggled to conceal. “You know something. A dream? You’ve
dreamed something.”

“Not about them. It’s not them in trouble. It’s about you. Us.”

“Tell me.”

Jess pursed her lips. “I
can’t. Not until I understand it. I’ve learned the hard way that if I share my dreams too soon it causes nothing but trouble.”

“Are we in danger?”

“In the dream? Yes.”

“But you won’t tell me from who, or what, or why?”

Jess laughed, and Amanda with her. “We are so pathetic,” Jess said. They shared feelings of camaraderie. Of sisterhood. Survival.

“Don’t do anything stupid,”
Jess said.

“With me, I’m not sure that’s possible.”

They laughed again.

“I love you, you know?” Jess said. “More than anyone. More than any of this. Real love. The kind where I’d run in front of a bus to stop it from hitting you. That kind of
love.”

Amanda nodded, her eyes going shiny. “Shut up.”

“I’m going to come get you if you mess this up.” Jess gave her a fierce hug,
holding her close. “Whatever you do, keep looking over your shoulder.”

“Your dream.”

“Maybe.”

“You’re really not going to tell me?”

“I’m not…I can’t.” Jess paused to think about it. “Though maybe, in a way, I already have.”

T
HE FIVE
K
EEPERS AWOKE
within moments
of one another. It was snowing, but in an
Alice in
Wonderland
sort of way: pink, blue, green, red, and yellow circular flakes swirling about, stirred by an unpredictable breeze.

Charlene thought she’d crossed over into the inside of a snow globe. Maybeck saw it as confetti, but try as he might to capture and hold on to a flake, he could not. Philby simply sat,
staring, the professor at
work. Like Maybeck, Willa tried to displace the colorful balls, batting them with her hands and blowing on them. Nothing.

Finn knew what the others did not. He alone paid no attention to the electric atmosphere, looking instead for the way out.

Beyond what he knew to be glass, a group of long workbenches could be seen through the colorful snow. Empty wooden stools as tall as skyscrapers
rose alongside the worktables. A series of funnel
lights like winged canopies hung from black wires as thick as phone poles. Looking in the opposite direction revealed a long, shrinking tunnel, from which the colorful balls seemed to emerge in
steady streams.

“I’ve got it!” Finn cried, swatting at the colorful Ping-Pong–size balls as if they were annoying insects. “Come here, everyone.”

The others joined him, and Finn explained breathlessly that they’d arrived in a picture tube—apparently color, this time—but in shrunken form. In one direction were the
electronics; in the other, whatever space the television set occupied. He believed it was a workshop of some kind.

Judging by the soft light in the room and the fact that the funnel lights were not switched on, it was
daytime. Try as the Keepers might to leave the picture tube, there were only two proven
methods. The first was to stand tall, turn sideways, and jump. The second, to dive. In both cases, the slightest twitch of fear would confine one inside, as Finn had previously experienced. To
attempt a face-first jump would result in a painful collision.

“Why do I have no idea what you’re talking about?”
Philby said. He looked uncharacteristically pale and nervous.

“The folder!” Finn said energetically, trying to shake his friend out of his stupor. “Wayne created a color television from that information we gave him! These stupid balls are
pixels. The reason we all look so weird and low-resolution is that it isn’t a very good picture. I wonder what that will mean once we leave here?”

“Down, boy,” Maybeck said. “Let’s get everyone out of here before we play twenty questions!”

Ignoring Maybeck’s desire to leap first and ask questions later, Willa pressed Finn to explain his color television comment, which Finn did, patiently and in more detail. He should have
remembered the mem-ory loss and planned for it better. It was slowing them down.

“So,” Willa said carefully
to Philby, “for the time being, let’s assume Finn is not playing a practical joke.” She then presented Philby with a physics problem:
would their highly charged particles require excessive energy to break free of the cathode ray tube, and if so, were they better off attempting the disconnect as solos or as a group?

“You’re saying the loss of energy may cause a kind of brown-out within the
circuitry,” Philby said, his eyebrows drawing together in thought.

“Tube circuitry,” Willa said. “Not yet transistor. If you brown-out a tube, with no capacitors to sustain it—”

“That’s like a Fender guitar amp,” Maybeck said, eyes widening. “When those things don’t have enough power, they distort big time. It gets ugly fast.”

“Meaning,” Willa said to Philby, “any remaining high concentrations
of energy—”

“Will degrade precipitously!” Philby clapped his hands together.

“You’re getting away from me,” said Charlene, wrinkling her nose. “Keep it in the ballpark, would you?”

Smiling at her friend, Willa explained that if, say, two of them jumped first, the remaining three might be caught in the equivalent of an electronic storm. The sudden drop in energy would push
the system
to hurriedly fire photons at the screen and thus fill the picture tube with what had gone missing. The DHIs left inside would find themselves facing a firing squad of high energy.

Philby added that the sudden drop in energy could cause the circuitry to “brown out” and overheat. The remaining DHIs would be degraded and diminished, and, if the system failed
altogether, trapped.

“Lost,”
Willa concluded. “In a kind of electronic Sleeping Beauty Syndrome. Like when a computer crashes and the document you were working on is gone. You never get it
back.”

“Lost,” Charlene whispered, looking wide-eyed at Maybeck.

“It’s not that easy, though,” Philby said, and presented a third possibility: the departure of all five at once might “fry” the television. “It could close
the
door we came through.”

“We can turn around now,” Finn said. “Before this goes too far. The return from here is to dive back into the picture tube.” He gestured behind them. “When we were
on Jingles, we felt ourselves being swallowed by a tunnel-like thing behind us, right? I think if we ran in that direction now, the same thing would happen. We’d return.”

“That’s my vote,” said Charlene
decisively. “Return while we still can. How did we even get here? I am so totally confused. Philby, maybe you can do calculations or
something? Once we’re back, I mean. I don’t like where this is going.”

“Vote,” said Maybeck. “Hands up for diving into that workshop.”

Four hands went up.

Finn grinned. “We did it, you guys!”

“Did what?” Maybeck asked skeptically.

“Followed
Wayne’s message. Made it here. You guys don’t know what’s going on right now—”

“I have
no idea
what’s going on right now!” Philby sounded desperate.

“But Finn and I do,” Maybeck said, “and it’s ridiculously, amazingly incredible. We’ve done the impossible.”

Most of all
, Finn wanted to say,
you guys are stuck with me
.

But he kept the sentiment to himself.

“Okay.” Charlene couldn’t
keep her voice from trembling. “Are we seriously not going back?”

“No way,” Maybeck said. “You have any idea what’s out there?” He pointed toward the workshop.

Philby looked and sounded bewildered. “I feel as if I should know, but for some reason I don’t. I’ve got nothing.”