She jumped up from the couch. "Whatever. Fine. Let me get my keys. Jesus."

He had no idea how he'd angered her, but it was clear that he had, and the last thing he wanted was to get into a car with her, but he couldn't think of a way of saying that without escalating things.

So they drove in white-lipped silence to the ride, Hilda tense with anger, Perry tense with worry, both of them touchy as cats, neither saying a word.

But when they pulled up to the ride, they both let out a gasp. It was lit with rigged floodlights and car headlights, and it was swarming with people. As they drew closer, they saw that the market stalls were strewn across the parking lot, in smashed pieces. As they drew closer still, they saw that the ride itself was staring eyeless at them, window-gla.s.s smashed.

Perry was out of the car even before it stopped rolling, Hilda shouting something after him. Lester was just on the other side of the ride-entrance, wearing a paper mask and rubber boots, wading in three-inch deep, sc.u.mmy water.

Perry splashed to a halt. "Holy s.h.i.t," he breathed. The ride was lit with glow-sticks, waterproof lamps, and LED torches, and the lights reflected crazily from the still water that filled it as far as the eye could see, way out into the gloom.

Lester looked up at him. His face was lined and exhausted, and it gleamed with sweat. "Storm broke out all the windows and trashed the roof, then flooded us out. It did a real number on the market, too."

His voice was dead.

Perry was wordless. Bits of the ride-exhibits floated in the water, along with the corpses of the robots.

"No drainage," Lester said. "The code says drainage, but there's none here. I never noticed it before. I'm going to rig a pump, but my workshop's pretty much toast." Lester's workshop had been in the old garden-center at the side of the ride. It was all gla.s.s. "We had some pretty amazing winds."

Perry felt like he should be showing off his wound to prove that he hadn't been f.u.c.king off while the disaster was underway, but he couldn't bring himself to do so. "We got caught in it in Miami," he said.

"Wondered where you were. The kid who was minding the shop just cut and run when the storm rolled in."

"He did? Christ, what an irresponsible a.s.shole. I'll break his neck."

A slimy raft of kitchen gnomes -- their second business venture -- floated past silently in the harsh watery light. The smell was almost unbearable.

"It wasn't his job --" Lester's voice cracked on *job*, and he breathed deeply. "It wasn't his job, Perry. It was your job. You're running around, having a good time with your girlfriend, firing lawyers --" He stopped and breathed again. "You know that they're going to sue us, right? They're going to turn us into a smoking ruin because you fired them, and what the f.u.c.k are you going to do about that? Whose job is that?"

"I thought you said they weren't going to sue," Perry said. It came out in an embarra.s.sed mumble. Lester had never talked to him like this. Never.

"Kettlewell and Tjan aren't going to sue," Lester said. "The lawyers you fired, the venture capitalists who backed them? They're going to turn us into paste."

"What would you have preferred?" Hilda said. She was standing in the doorway, away from the flood, watching them intently. Her eyes were racc.o.o.n-bagged, but she was rigid with anger. Perry could hardly look at her. "Would you have preferred to have those f.u.c.kers go around destroying the lives of your supporters in order to enrich a few pig a.s.sholes?"

Lester just looked at her.

"Well?"

"Shut up, Yoko," he said. "We're having a private conversation here."

Perry's jaw dropped, and Hilda was already in motion, sloshing into the water in her sandals. She smacked Lester across the cheek, a crack that echoed back over the water and walls.

Lester brought his hand up to his reddening face. "Are you done?" he said, his voice hard.

Hilda looked at Perry. Lester looked at Perry. Perry looked at the water.

"I'll meet you by the car," Perry said. It came out in a mumble. They held for a moment, the three of them, then Hilda walked out again, leaving Lester and Perry looking at one another.

"I'm sorry," Perry said.

"About Hilda? About the lawsuits? About skipping out?"

"About everything," he said. "Let's fix this up, OK?"

"The ride? I don't even know if I want to. Why bother? It'll cost a fortune to get it online, and they'll only shut it down again with the lawsuit. Why bother."

"So we won't fix the ride. Let's fix us."

"Why bother," Lester said, and it came out in the same mumble.

The watery sounds of the room and the smell and the harsh reflected rippling light made Perry want to leave. "Lester --" he began.

Lester shook his head. "There's nothing more we can do tonight, anyway. I'll rent a pump in the morning."

"I'll do it," Perry said. "You work on the Disney-in-a-Box thing."

Lester laughed, a bitter sound. "Yeah, OK, buddy. Sure."

Out in the parking-lot, the hawkers were putting their stalls back together as best they could. The shantytown was lit up and Perry wondered how it had held together. Pretty good, is what he guessed -- they met and exceeded county code on all of those plans.

Hilda honked the horn at him. She was fuming behind the wheel and they drove in silence. He felt numb and wrung out and he didn't know what to say to her. He lay awake in bed that night waiting to hear Lester come home, but he didn't.

Sammy loved his morning meetings. They all came to his office, all the different park execs, creatives, and emissaries from the old partner companies that had spun off to make movies and merch and educational materials. They all came each day to talk to him about the next day's Disney-in-a-Box build. They all came to beg him to think about adding in something from their franchises and cantons to the next installment.

There were over a million DiaBs in the field now, and they weren't even trying to keep up with orders anymore. Sammy loved looking at the online auction sites to see what the boxes were going for -- he knew that some of his people had siphoned off a carload or two of the things to e-tail out the back door. He loved that. Nothing was a better barometer of your success than having made something other people cared enough about to steal.

He loved his morning meetings, and he conducted them with the flair of a benevolent emperor. He'd gotten a bigger office -- technically it was a board-room for DiaB strategy, but Sammy *was* the DiaB strategy. He'd outfitted it with fan-photos of their DiaB shrines in their homes, with kids watching enthralled as the day's model was a.s.sembled before their eyes. The hypnotic fascination in their eyes was unmistakable. Disney was the focus of their daily lives, and all they wanted was more, more, more. He could push out five models a day, ten, and they'd go nuts for them.

But he wouldn't. He was too cunning. One model a day was all. Leave them wanting more. Never breathe a hint of what the next day's model would be -- oh, how he loved to watch the blogs and the chatter as the models self-a.s.sembled, the heated, time-bound fights over what the day's model was going to be.

"Good morning, Ron," he said. Wiener had been lobbying to get a Main Street build into the models for weeks now, and Sammy was taking great pleasure in denying it to him without shutting down all hope. Getting Ron Wiener to grovel before him every morning was better than a cup of coffee.

"I've been thinking about what you said, and you're right," Wiener said. He always started the meeting by telling Sammy how right he was to reject his last idea. "The flag-pole and marching-band scene would have too many pieces. House cats would knock it over. We need something more unitary, more visually striking. So here's what I've been thinking: what about the fire-engine?"

Sammy raised an indulgent eyebrow.

"Kids *love* fire trucks. All the colors are in the printer's gamut -- I checked. We could create a Mickey-and-Friends fire-crew to position around it, a little barn for it."

"The only thing I liked about firetrucks when I was a kid was that the word started with 'f' and ended with 'uck' --" Sammy smiled when he said it, and waited for Wiener to fake hilarity, too. The others in the room -- other park execs, some of their licensing partners, a few advertisers -- laughed too. Officially, this was a "brainstorming session," but everyone knew that it was all about getting the nod from Sammy.

Wiener laughed dutifully and slunk away. More supplicants came forward.

"How about this?" She was very cute -- dressed in smart, dark clothes that were more Lower East Side than Orlando. She smelled good, too -- one of the new colognes that hinted at free monomers, like hot plastic or a new-bought tire. Cat-slanted green eyes completed the package.

"What you got there?" She was from an ad agency, someone Disney Parks had done business with at some point. Agencies had been sending their people to these meetings too, trying to get a co-branding coup for one of their clients.