“Lil,” I said, looking into her eyes, trying to burn my POV into her. “We have to do this. It’s our only chance. We’ll recruit hundreds to come to Florida and work on the rehab. We’ll give every Mansion nut on the planet a shot at joining up, then we’ll recruit them again to work at it, to run the telepresence rigs. We’ll get buy-in from the biggest super-recommenders in the world, and we’ll build something better and faster than any ad-hoc ever has, without abandoning the original Imagineers’ vision. It will be unspeakably Bitchun.”
Lil dropped her eyes and it was her turn to flush. She paced the floor, hands swinging at her sides. I could tell that she was still angry with me, but excited and scared and yes, passionate.
“It’s not up to me, you know,” she said at length, still pacing. Dan and I exchanged wicked grins. She was in.
“I know,” I said. But it was, almost—she was a real opinion-leader in the Liberty Square ad-hoc, someone who knew the systems back and forth, someone who made good, reasonable decisions and kept her head in a crisis. Not a hothead. Not prone to taking radical switchbacks. This plan would burn up that reputation and the Whuffie that accompanied it, in short order, but by the time that happened, she’d have plenty of Whuffie with the new, thousands-strong ad-hoc.
“I mean, I can’t guarantee anything. I’d like to study the plans that Imagineering comes through with, do some walk-throughs—”
I started to object, to remind her that speed was of the essence, but she beat me to it.
“But I won’t. We have to move fast. I’m in.”
She didn’t come into my arms, didn’t kiss me and tell me everything was forgiven, but she bought in, and that was enough.
My systems came back online sometime that day, and I hardly noticed, I was so preoccupied with the new Mansion. Holy shit, was it ever audacious: since the first Mansion opened in California in 1969, no one had ever had the guts to seriously fuxor with it. Oh, sure, the Paris version, Phantom Manor, had a slightly different storyline, but it was just a minor bit of tweakage to satisfy the European market at the time. No one wanted to screw up the legend.