“Excuse me, Mr. Hotshot, but I do not want to hear you talking that way, and you know it. If this is going to go to your head, we are not doing this.”

Actually, Finn’s mom loved to hear him talk that way, though she pretended otherwise. She had schooled him in self-confidence. He’d auditioned for several things and never won a part yet, but not because he lacked confidence.

“Okay. I’ll do it,” he said.

She beamed. He loved to see her like that—bright-eyed and childlike.

A month after Finn had passed the final audition and won a place as a Disney Host Interactive, or DHI, he arrived at an enormous soundstage at Disney-MGM Studios.

The size of a jet aircraft hangar, the soundstage was rigged with hundreds of film lights, a green screen that filled one entire wall, trampolines, cameras, boom microphones, and dozens of scruffily dressed crew members. He’d never seen anything like it, except in movies, though he did his best to pretend otherwise. A college-age girl dressed in black and gray wore a headset with a microphone mouthpiece, a fuzzy black ball by her lips. She called herself a “PA.” It took Finn four days to realize that that stood for production assistant. Her boss was a guy named Brad, from Disney Imagineering.

Brad made Finn dress in green tights and a green stretchy top and walk around on a green stage. The costume had small metal sensors, like thin coins, stuck to the tights on every joint of his body—dozens of the things. Cameras hooked up to a computer recorded the movement of the small metal disks. In the cameras’ eyes, the green costume, moving against the green background, basically made Finn’s body disappear. The computer saw him instead as a floating cloud of shiny points. The engineers would later use the recordings of Finn’s movements to animate the holograms of Finn and the other kids. Brad explained that this process was called “motion capture.”

There were five kids in all. One very pretty girl, Charlene, had sandy blond hair and blue eyes, with pale skin. The other girl, Willa, struck him as a little geeky, but extremely smart. She was sweet, but not knockout gorgeous like Charlene. Not many girls looked like Charlene. Willa struck him as moody. With her hooded brown eyes and dark, braided hair, she might have been Asian or Native American. Maybeck, an African American kid, was taller than Finn by a full head and had the big-guy attitude to go along with it. For some reason he made a point of telling Finn that he was a Baptist. Finn, who wasn’t terribly religious, wasn’t sure what to do with that information, nor even what it meant.

On a break, Finn hung out with Maybeck and the last of the five, a boy who introduced himself as Philby. Like Maybeck, he obviously preferred to be called by his last name.

Philby looked older than all of them, but was in fact the same age. He had a British accent or something close to it—Australia or New Zealand, Finn guessed.

“Quite the motley group,” Philby said.

“We’re the Orlando assortment pack,” Maybeck quipped. “One of every flavor.”

Finn said, “We’re all from different schools, right? What’s with that? It’s like they wanted to make sure none of us knew each other. Why would they do that?”

“Control,” Maybeck answered. “These kinds of guys…with them it’s all about control. That guy, Brad? I don’t trust him. He’s keeping stuff from us. Count on it.”

Finn liked Brad, but he knew what Maybeck was talking about. It did feel like they weren’t being told everything.

“We’d better be able to trust him,” Finn suggested. “He’s the one turning us into holograms.”

“I don’t know about you,” Maybeck answered, “but I never trust anyone but myself.” He added a little late, “No offense.”

Finn wanted out of his tights.

Philby said, “Did you know that DHI—Disney Host Interactive—also stands for Daylight Hologram Imaging?”

“Seriously?” Finn asked.

“Totally.”

“See?” Maybeck said. “That’s what I’m talking about—right there. First I’ve heard of it.”

Philby continued, “This has never been done before. DHIs. Not like this. We’re going to be turned into absolutely perfect three-dimensional images. Duplicates of ourselves. We’ll look real, but we’ll be made of nothing but light. It’s pretty cool technology, actually.”

“But if it’s never been done before,” Finn said, “how do we know it’s safe?”

The boys glanced back and forth between themselves. Philby said, “It’s like taking pictures, that’s all. How can it not be safe?”

“It pays,” Maybeck said harshly. “That’s all I care about. My aunt could use the extra money.”

“Your aunt?” Finn said, before he took the time to think that his question might sound rude.

“Yeah,” Maybeck said. “I live with my aunt. My parents…They aren’t around.”

Finn felt awful for having asked. Maybeck grew silent. He seemed less tough all of a sudden.

“Sorry,” Finn said, “for asking.”

“Not your problem,” Maybeck said in a softer voice. “My aunt’s cool. She tried to get me in a toothpaste ad, but I lost out. Then this thing came up. Brad told me that if I’d gotten that ad I’d never have been asked to be a host. They want nothing but fresh faces.”

“So you got lucky,” Finn said.

“We all got lucky,” Maybeck agreed. “A DHI in the Magic Kingdom? We’re going to be famous.”

“We’re going to be ghosts,” Philby corrected. “Electronic ghosts, provided that this technology actually works.”

“Don’t say stuff like that,” Maybeck pleaded. “Of course it works.”

“Of course,” Philby said. “My bad.” But he sounded less than convinced.

3

“I don’t get it,” Dilard said as he gripped Finn’s ankles for sit-ups. There were about forty kids on the crabgrass doing various forms of exercise out behind the school, in a field enclosed by a corroded chain-link fence. The South Florida climate ate metal down to rust and turned wood to sponge. Only concrete had a fighting chance. The kids, spread around the field in clumps, tried to make it look like they were exercising. Dirt stuck to Finn’s arms and the back of his neck. He looked up at the ocean-blue sky full of billowing white clouds.

“The other DHIs,” Finn explained. “The Disney Hosts…I’ve got to hook up with them before I go back.”

“You know how stupid that sounds?”

“Yeah, but I don’t care. No matter what, I’ve got to find out if they’ve had similar…dreams.”

Dillard glanced up and immediately let go of Finn’s ankles. Finn went head over heels backward. He found himself looking at an upside-down version of a girl named Amanda Lockhart, who had transferred to the school in late September, a few weeks earlier. She had exotic-looking eyes, a deep, natural tan, and a few freckles on her cheeks. She was stretching along with a dozen other girls. Finn wasn’t big on girls, but something about Amanda grabbed and held his attention.

Dillard clasped his ankles again. Finn struggled back up to sitting.

He squeezed out a couple more sit-ups. “It’s experimental,” he explained. “The DHI technology. Not exactly photography, not exactly computer graphics.”

“You’re going psycho on me,” Dillard complained.

Finn said, “When I woke up, the moon was right where it belonged. You want to explain that?”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” Dillard said, “but I think they fried your brain.”

“I don’t know any of their full names. Willa, Charlene, Maybeck, and Philby. Maybeck and Philby will be easier to find than the girls, because those are their last names, unusual names at that. There was this guy at MGM who ran things. He would know who everyone is, though I’m not sure he’d tell me.”

Dillard gave Finn a puzzled look. “I feel sorry for you, man. You’ve lost it.”