“But that’s not the illusion. The doc is supposed to be the authority on medical matters, even though he’s only got one trick: restore from backup. You’re reminding Pete of that, and he’s not happy to have it happen.”
I waited a week before returning to the Magic Kingdom, sunning myself on the white sand beach at the Contemporary, jogging the Walk Around the World, taking a canoe out to the wild and overgrown Discovery Island, and generally cooling out. Dan came by in the evenings and it was like old times, running down the pros and cons of Whuffie and Bitchunry and life in general, sitting on my porch with a sweating pitcher of lemonade.
On the last night, he presented me with a clever little handheld, a museum piece that I recalled fondly from the dawning days of the Bitchun Society. It had much of the functionality of my defunct systems, in a package I could slip in my shirt pocket. It felt like part of a costume, like the turnip watches the Ben Franklin streetmosphere players wore at the American Adventure.
Museum piece or no, it meant that I was once again qualified to participate in the Bitchun Society, albeit more slowly and less efficiently than I once may’ve. I took it downstairs the next morning and drove to the Magic Kingdom’s castmember lot.
At least, that was the plan. When I got down to the Contemporary’s parking lot, my runabout was gone. A quick check with the handheld revealed the worst: my Whuffie was low enough that someone had just gotten inside and driven away, realizing that they could make more popular use of it than I could.
With a sinking feeling, I trudged up to my room and swiped my key through the lock. It emitted a soft, unsatisfied bzzz and lit up, “Please see the front desk.” My room had been reassigned, too. I had the short end of the Whuffie stick.
At least there was no mandatory Whuffie check on the monorail platform, but the other people on the car were none too friendly to me, and no one offered me an inch more personal space than was necessary. I had hit bottom.
I took the castmember entrance to the Magic Kingdom, clipping my name tag to my Disney Operations polo shirt, ignoring the glares of my fellow castmembers in the utilidors.