Lil nodded. "That's a good point, Lisa. The offer we're making to the telepresence players is probationary-they don't get to vote until after we've agreed that the rehab is a success."

Another castmember stood. I recognized him: Dave, a heavyset, self-important jerk who loved to work the front door, even though he blew his spiel about half the time. "Lillian," he said, smiling sadly at her, "I think you're really making a big mistake here. We love the Mansion, all of us, and so do the guests. It's a piece of history, and we're its custodians, not its masters. Changing it like this, well …" he shook his head. "It's not good stewardship. If the guests wanted to walk through a funhouse with guys jumping out of the shadows saying 'booga-booga,' they'd go to one of the Halloween Houses in their hometowns. The Mansion's better than that. I can't be a part of this plan."

I wanted to knock the smug grin off his face. I'd delivered essentially the same polemic a thousand times-in reference to Debra's work-and hearing it from this jerk in reference to mine made me go all hot and red inside.

"Look," I said. "If we don't do this, if we don't change things, they'll get changed for us. By someone else. The question, Dave , is whether a responsible custodian lets his custodianship be taken away from him, or whether he does everything he can to make sure that he's still around to ensure that his charge is properly cared for. Good custodianship isn't sticking your head in the sand."

I could tell I wasn't doing any good. The mood of the crowd was getting darker, the faces more set. I resolved not to speak again until the meeting was done, no matter what the provocation.

Lil smoothed my remarks over, and fielded a dozen more, and it looked like the objections would continue all afternoon and all night and all the next day, and I felt woozy and overwrought and miserable all at the same time, staring at Lil and her harried smile and her nervous smoothing of her hair over her ears.

Finally, she called the question. By tradition, the votes were collected in secret and publicly tabulated over the data-channels. The group's eyes unfocussed as they called up HUDs and watched the totals as they rolled in. I was offline and unable to vote or watch.

At length, Lil heaved a relieved sigh and smiled, dropping her hands behind her back.

"All right then," she said, over the crowd's buzz. "Let's get to work."

I stood up, saw Dan and Lil staring into each other's eyes, a meaningful glance between new lovers, and I saw red. Literally. My vision washed over pink, and a strobe pounded at the edges of my vision. I took two lumbering steps towards them and opened my mouth to say something horrible, and what came out was "Waaagh." My right side went numb and my leg slipped out from under me and I crashed to the floor.

The slatted light from the shutters cast its way across my chest as I tried to struggle up with my left arm, and then it all went black.

***

I wasn't nuts after all.

The doctor's office in the Main Street infirmary was clean and white and decorated with posters of Jiminy Cricket in doctors' whites with an outsized stethoscope. I came to on a hard pallet under a sign that reminded me to get a check-up twice a year, by gum! and I tried to bring my hands up to shield my eyes from the over bright light and the over-cheerful signage, and discovered that I couldn't move my arms. Further investigation revealed that this was because I was strapped down, in full-on four-point restraint.

"Waaagh," I said again.

Dan's worried face swam into my field of vision, along with a serious-looking doctor, apparent 70, with a Norman Rockwell face full of crow'sfeet and smile-lines.

"Welcome back, Julius. I'm Doctor Pete," the doctor said, in a kindly voice that matched the face. Despite my recent disillusion with castmember bullshit, I found his schtick comforting.

I slumped back against the palette while the doc shone lights in my eyes and consulted various diagnostic apparati. I bore it in stoic silence, too confounded by the horrible Waaagh sounds to attempt more speech. The doc would tell me what was going on when he was ready.

"Does he need to be tied up still?" Dan asked, and I shook my head urgently. Being tied up wasn't my idea of a good time.

The doc smiled kindly. "I think it's for the best, for now. Don't worry, Julius, we'll have you up and about soon enough."

Dan protested, but stopped when the doc threatened to send him out of the room. He took my hand instead.

My nose itched. I tried to ignore it, but it got worse and worse, until it was all I could think of, the flaming lance of itch that strobed at the tip of my nostril. Furiously, I wrinkled my face, rattled at my restraints. The doc absentmindedly noticed my gyrations and delicately scratched my nose with a gloved finger. The relief was fantastic. I just hoped my nuts didn't start itching anytime soon.

Finally, the doctor pulled up a chair and did something that caused the head of the bed to raise up so that I could look him in the eye.

"Well, now," he said, stroking his chin. "Julius, you've got a problem. Your friend here tells me your systems have been offline for more than a month. It sure would've been better if you'd come in to see me when it started up.

"But you didn't, and things got worse." He nodded up at Jiminy Cricket's recriminations: Go ahead, see your doc! "It's good advice, son, but what's done is done. You were restored from a backup about eight weeks ago, I see. Without more tests, I can't be sure, but my theory is that the brain-machine interface they installed at that time had a material defect. It's been deteriorating ever since, misfiring and rebooting. The shut-downs are a protective mechanism, meant to keep it from introducing the kind of seizure you experienced this afternoon. When the interface senses malfunction, it shuts itself down and boots a diagnostic mode, attempts to fix itself and come back online.

"Well, that's fine for minor problems, but in cases like this, it's bad news. The interface has been deteriorating steadily, and it's only a matter of time before it does some serious damage."

"Waaagh?" I asked. I meant to say, All right, but what's wrong with my mouth?

The doc put a finger to my lips. "Don't try. The interface has locked up, and it's taken some of your voluntary nervous processes with it. In time, it'll probably shut down, but for now, there's no point. That's why we've got you strapped down-you were thrashing pretty hard when they brought you in, and we didn't want you to hurt yourself."

Probably shut down ? Jesus. I could end up stuck like this forever. I started shaking.

The doc soothed me, stroking my hand, and in the process pressed a transdermal on my wrist. The panic receded as the transdermal's sedative oozed into my bloodstream.

"There, there," he said. "It's nothing permanent. We can grow you a new clone and refresh it from your last backup. Unfortunately, that backup is a few months old. If we'd caught it earlier, we may've been able to salvage a current backup, but given the deterioration you've displayed to date … Well, there just wouldn't be any point."

My heart hammered. I was going to lose two months-lose it all, never happened. My assassination, the new Hall of Presidents and my shameful attempt thereon, the fights with Lil, Lil and Dan, the meeting. My plans for the rehab! All of it, good and bad, every moment flensed away.

I couldn't do it. I had a rehab to finish, and I was the only one who understood how it had to be done. Without my relentless prodding, the ad-hocs would surely revert to their old, safe ways. They might even leave it half-done, halt the process for an interminable review, present a soft belly for Debra to savage.

I wouldn't be restoring from backup.

***

I had two more seizures before the interface finally gave up and shut itself down. I remember the first, a confusion of vision-occluding strobes and uncontrollable thrashing and the taste of copper, but the second happened without waking me from deep unconsciousness.

When I came to again in the infirmary, Dan was still there. He had a day's growth of beard and new worrylines at the corners of his newly rejuvenated eyes. The doctor came in, shaking his head.

"Well, now, it seems like the worst is over. I've drawn up the consent forms for the refresh and the new clone will be ready in an hour or two. In the meantime, I think heavy sedation is in order. Once the restore's been completed, we'll retire this body for you and we'll be all finished up."

Retire this body? Kill me, is what it meant.

"No," I said. I thrilled in my restraints: my voice was back under my control!

"Oh, really now." The doc lost his bedside manner, let his exasperation slip through. "There's nothing else for it. If you'd come to me when it all started, well, we might've had other options. You've got no one to blame but yourself."

"No," I repeated. "Not now. I won't sign."

Dan put his hand on mine. I tried to jerk out from under it, but the restraints and his grip held me fast. "You've got to do it, Julius. It's for the best," he said.

"I'm not going to let you kill me," I said, through clenched teeth. His fingertips were callused, worked rough with exertion well beyond the normal call of duty.

"No one's killing you, son," the doctor said. Son, son, son. Who knew how old he was? He could be 18 for all I knew. "It's just the opposite: we're saving you. If you continue like this, it will only get worse. The seizures, mental breakdown, the whole melon going soft. You don't want that."

I thought of Zed's spectacular transformation into a crazy person. No, I sure don't . "I don't care about the interface. Chop it out. I can't do it now." I swallowed. "Later. After the rehab. Eight more weeks."

***

The irony! Once the doc knew I was serious, he sent Dan out of the room and rolled his eyes up while he placed a call. I saw his gorge work as he subvocalized. He left me bound to the table, to wait.

No clocks in the infirmary, and no internal clock, and it may have been ten minutes or five hours. I was catheterized, but I didn't know it until urgent necessity made the discovery for me.

When the doc came back, he held a small device that I instantly recognized: a HERF gun.

Oh, it wasn't the same model I'd used on the Hall of Presidents. This one was smaller, and better made, with the precise engineering of a surgical tool. The doc raised his eyebrows at me. "You know what this is," he said, flatly. A dim corner of my mind gibbered, he knows, he knows, the Hall of Presidents . But he didn't know. That episode was locked in my mind, invulnerable to backup.