Makers

As it turned out, his prison infirmary time didn’t last long at all. Kettlewell had faded fast from the riot, headed back to the guesthouse and got the lawyers on the phone. He’d shown them the stream off of Perry’s phone and they were in front of a judge before Perry reached the jail.

Perry was led out of the infirmary with his arm in a sling. His face was still painfully swollen, and he’d managed to turn an ankle as well. At least his hearing was coming back.

Kettlewell took Perry’s good arm and gave him a soulful hug that embarrassed him. Kettlewell led him outside, to where a big cab was waiting. In it were the family Kettlewell, Lester, and Suza

He managed a brave smile. “Looks like you guys got the full treatment, huh?”

Suza

Kettlewell and Perry fought about what to do next, but Kettlewell prevailed. He took them to a private doctor who photographed them and examined them and x-rayed them, documenting everything while Ada Kettlewell played camera-woman with her phone, videoing it all.

“I don’t think suing the police is going to help, Landon,” Perry said. Suza

“It’ll help if we cash out a big settlement—it’ll bankroll our defense against the Disney trademark claims. IP lawyers charge more than God per hour. I got the injunction lifted, but we’re still going to have to go to court, and that’s not going to be cheap.”

It needled Perry—he didn’t like the idea of being embroiled in the legal system in the first place, and while he could grudgingly admit a certain elegance in using cash settlements from the law to fund their defense in court, the whole business made him squirm.

Eva sat down beside him. “I can tell this sucks for you, Perry.” Ada whispered the word sucks and giggled, and Eva rolled her eyes. “But there’s fifty people we didn’t bail out in there, who are all of them going to have to figure out their own way through the legal system. You can’t run a business if your customers risk a solid beating and jail time just for showing up.”

I don’t want to run a business, he thought, but he knew that was petulant. He was the man with the roll of bills down his pants. “There are fifty people still in the slam?”

Kettlewell nodded. Suza

“Let’s get them out. All of them.”

Kettlewell raised his eyebrows. “And how do you plan on doing that?”

“We’ll charge it to the business,” Perry said. Lester chuckled and gave him a thump on the back. “It’s a legit expense—these are our customers after all.”

Kettlewell shook his head at all of them, then he left the doctor’s office. He already had his phone stuck to his head and was talking with the lawyer before he got out of earshot.

Perry and Lester and Suza

“Here we go again,” Lester said, wrinkling his nose and holding the wailing Pascal at arm’s length.

Suza

“Fatherhood would suit you,” she said.

He went bright red. “Don’t you get any ideas,” he said. Suza

Perry felt huge. Larger than life. The adventure was begi

It was a feeling that lasted all the way back to the ride.

But then he surveyed the ride itself and found it in utter ruins, far worse than it had been left when he’d been dragged out of it. Every single exhibit was smashed, strewn here and there.

He couldn’t believe it. He brought up the clean-up lights, flooding the place, and then he saw what he’d missed at first: the smashed exhibits were not smashed exhibits—they were replicas of smashed exhibits. At every ride in the country, police had gone in smashing, and every other ride in the country had faithfully reproduced the damage, dutiful printers churning out replica detritus and dutiful robots placing it with micrometer precision.

He began to laugh and couldn’t stop. Lester came in and immediately got the joke and laughed along with him. They managed to stop laughing just long enough to explain it to Suza

Finally he got down to business, opening the change-log and rolling the ride back through the “revisions” to its unsmashed state. It would take the robots a long time to set everything right again, but at least he didn’t have to oversee it.

Instead, he tracked down as many of the market-stall vendors as he could locate in the shantytown and made sure they were all right—they were, though they’d lost some inventory. He comped them all a month’s rent and made sure they knew that steps were being taken to keep it from happening again. He knew that they could make nearly as much money selling from a roadside or online, and he wanted to keep them happy. Besides, it wasn’t their fault.

He was exhausted and his arm was really starting to gripe him. He found himself stopping in the street every few steps to rub his eyes and force himself on. Francis came on him when he was like that, leaning against the prefab concrete wall of one of the tall, twisty shanties, and he took Perry’s car-keys away and drove him home. Perry was in too much of a state by the time he got there to think about how Francis would get back—he was already lying in bed before it occurred to him that the old man with the gimpy leg probably walked the ten miles home.

He woke up later that night to sex noises from Lester’s room and he recognized Suza

It was silly—they’d only spent one night together, and he had to admit that as great as the sex had been, he’d had better with the fatkins gymnasts you could pick up down on South Beach. She was too young for him. She lived in Wisconsin. But there were touches in the ride that had originated with her instantiation—he looked over the logs every now and then—and he found himself contemplating them with sentimental smiles.

He fell asleep again and only woke when he rolled over on his bad arm and yelped himself awake. The smell of waffles, bacon and eggs was strong in the apartment. He couldn’t be bothered to figure out how to shower with his cast on, so he pulled on a pair of shorts and let himself into the living room.

Lester was at the stove, cooking up half a pig and pouring maple batter into the waffle-iron. He waved a spatula at him and pointed out at the terrace. Perry stepped out and saw Suza