The next morning, Perry found himself desperately embroiled in ordering more goop for the three-d printers. *Lots more*. The other rides had finally come online in the night, after interminable network screw-ups and malfing robots and printers and scanners that wouldn't cooperate, but now there were seven rides in the network, seven rides whose riders were rearranging, adding and subtracting, and there was reconciling to do. The printers hummed and hummed. "The natives are restless," Lester said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the growing queue of would-be riders. "We going to be ready to open soon?" Perry had fallen into a classic nerd trap of having almost solved a problem and not realizing that the last three percent of the solution would take as long as the rest of it put together. Meanwhile, the ride was in a shambles as robots attempted to print and arrange objects to mirror those around the nation. "Soon soon," Perry said. He stood up and looked around at the shambles. "I lie. This crap won't be ready for hours yet. Sorry. Fuck it. Open up." Lester did. "I know, I know, but that's the deal with the ride. It's got to get in sync. You know we've been working on this for months now. It's just growing pains. Here, I'll give you back your money you come back tomorrow, it'll all be set to rights." The angry rider was a regular, one of the people who came by every morning to ride before work. She was gaunt and tall and geeky and talked like an engineer, with the nerd accent. "What kind of printer?" Lester broke in. Perry hid his snicker with a cough. Lester would get her talking about the ins and outs of her printer, talking shop, and before you knew it she'd be mollified. Perry sold another ticket, and another. "Hi again!" It was the creepy guy, the suit who'd shown up in Boston. Tjan had a crazy theory about why he'd left the Boston launch in such a hurry, but who knew? "Hi there," Perry said. "Long time no see. Back from Boston, huh?" "For months." The guy was grinning and sweating and didn't look good. He had a fresh bruise on his cheek with a couple of knuckle prints clearly visible. "Can't wait to get back on the ride. It's been too long." # Sammy had been through a rehab and knew how they went. You laid off a bunch of people in one fast, hard big bang. Hired some unemployment coaches for the senior unionized employees, scheduled a couple of "networking events" where they could mingle with other unemployed slobs and pass around home-made business cards. You needed a Judas goat, someone who'd talk up the rehab to the other employees, whom you could rely on. Death Waits had been his Judas goat for the Fantasyland goth makeover. He'd tirelessly evangelized the idea to his co-workers, had found goth tru-fans who'd blog the hell out of every inch of the rehab, had run every errand no matter how menial.