I settled for patting her behind affectionately,
and she wriggled appreciatively. "He's looking better."
His rejuve had taken him back to apparent 25, the way I remembered him.
He was rawboned and leathery, but still had the defeated stoop that had
startled me when I saw him at the Adventurer's Club. "What did he want?"
"He's been hanging out with Debra -- he wanted to make sure I knew what
she's up to."
Debra was one of the old guard, a former comrade of Lil's parents. She'd
spent a decade in Disneyland Beijing, coding sim-rides. If she had her
way, we'd tear down every marvelous rube goldberg in the Park and
replace them with pristine white sim boxes on giant, articulated servos.
The problem was that she was _really good_ at coding sims. Her Great
Movie Ride rehab at MGM was breathtaking -- the Star Wars sequence had
already inspired a hundred fan-sites that fielded millions of hits.
She'd leveraged her success into a deal with the Adventureland ad-hocs
to rehab the Pirates of the Caribbean, and their backstage areas were
piled high with reference: treasure chests and cutlasses and bowsprits.
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