What the hell was happening at the Miami ride, anyway? He could follow it online, run the three-d flythroughs of the ride as it stood, even download and print his own versions of the ride objects, but none of that told him what it *felt like* to get on the ride, to be in its clanking bowels, surrounded by other riders, pointing and marveling and laughing at the scenes and motion. Rides were things that you had to ride to understand. Describing a ride was like talking about a movie -- so abstract and remote. Like talking about sex versus having sex. Sammy loved rides. Or he used to, anyway. So much more than films, so much more than books -- so immersive and human, and the whole crowd thing, all the other people waiting to ride it or just getting off it. It had started with coasters -- doesn't every kid love coasters? -- but he'd ended up a connoisseur, a gourmand who loved every species of ride, from thrill-rides to monorails, carousels to dark-rides. There'd been a time when he'd ridden every ride in the park once a week, and every ride in every nearby park once a month. That had been years before. Now he sat in an office and made important decisions and he was lucky if he made it onto a ride once a week. Not that it mattered anymore. He'd screwed up so bad that it was only a matter of time until he ended up on the bread-line. Or in jail. He realized he was staring glumly at the demolition, and pulled himself upright, sucked in a few breaths, mentally kicked himself in the ass and told himself to stop feeling sorry for himself. A young woman pried loose another resin skull finial and added it to the pile, placed another sheet of aerogel on top of it. People loved these little tchotchkes. They had a relationship with Disney Parks that made them want to come again and again, to own a piece of the place. They came for visits and then they visited in their hearts and they came back to bring their hearts home. It was an extremely profitable dynamic. That's what those ride people up in the Wal-Mart were making their hay on -- anyone could replicate the ride in their back-yard. You didn't have to fly from Madison to Orlando to have a little refresher experience. It was right there, at the end of the road. If only there was some way to put his rides, his park, right there in the riders' homes, in their literal back-yards. Being able to look at the webcams and take a three-d fly-through was one thing, but it wasn't the physical, visceral experience of being there. The maintenance crew had finished all the trim and now they were going after the props and animatronics. They never used to sell these off, because manufacturing the guts of a robot was too finicky to do any more than you had to -- it was far better to repurpose them, like the America Sings geese that had all their skin removed and found a new home as smart-talking robots in the pre-show for the old Star Tours.