Kingdom Keepers III(31)

“I must catch up to my guests,” Finn said. He turned and hurried off.

Reaching Soundstage B out of breath, Finn glanced around trying to make sure no one was watching. There were too many people milling about for him to know. At last it came down to a decision.

He turned the doorknob and opened the door.

Inside, he found everyone waiting.





14


PHILBY RAN THE CONTROLS. Jess and Amanda changed into skintight green leotards and tights that included booties, gloves, and full hoods that covered their heads and faces like ski masks. Patches of green plastic mesh had been sewn into the hoods to provide a way to see out, and to breathe.

Charlene attached the thirty-five wired sensors to each of the girls. The sensors would measure every kind of joint and muscle movement. Then the girls took turns on the green stage in front of the green background as Philby directed them to squat, stand, walk, lie down, run, crawl, dance, and jump. He thought up dozens of combinations of movements as Finn and Willa ran video cameras that captured and recorded, from multiple angles, every move the girls made. The girls made some mistakes and had to repeat their movements, many of them several times.

Philby worked a pair of computers, one recording the video, the other recording the digital output from each of the thirty-five sensors. The computers measured and recorded the similarities and differences between the way each of the girls moved compared to a database of how dozens of other people moved, including all the Kingdom Keepers, each of whom had been part of the database nearly from its inception.

Philby completed the recording with just fifteen minutes to go until Jess and Amanda absolutely had to be headed back to the Nash House. He had a good deal of work yet to accomplish, work that had to be done in Soundstage B, with its phenomenally powerful computers.

“No way I can get this done in time. And we still have all the voice work to do,” he said from his seat in the control room.

“Red alert!” came the voice of Wanda Alcott, issuing a warning that meant someone—Security?—was heading toward the soundstage.

The kids had practiced their roles for such an event: Willa stood poised, ready to kill the overhead lights; Philby put both computers into sleep mode; Finn and Charlene shut down the stand-alone lights and all the cameras; Jess and Amanda disconnected the main cables from their suits, the umbilical cords that fed the computers. Everyone was intent on hiding.

All the kids scattered, having elected hiding places earlier.

Jess—in the green suits it was hard to tell the girls apart—had difficulty unclipping the large plug at the end of the master cable. Amanda made it off the all-green stage, but Jess was still struggling with the oversize connector. There was no way she could leave the stage so long as that huge cable was attached to her suit.

Finn, who’d hidden behind a wall of plywood panels on casters, watched helplessly, desperately wanting to run out and help her.

Jess lay flat down onto the stage. The green of her suit and the cable blended perfectly with the green of the backdrop and flooring—she all but disappeared.

The lights went dark, and Finn heard Willa scamper to find a place to hide.

Only seconds passed before the door swung open and the lights came on again.

“I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” one of the two night watchmen said. “Do you see anything?”

“The report was someone hearing something,” the other man said. “We might as well look around.”

Leaving the door open behind them, the two walked to the center of the soundstage. Only then did Finn, peering out, see that a light on one of the cameras was still glowing. His eyes darted between the camera and Jess, who remained flattened on the green deck, only a matter of yards from where the two men stood.

One of the guards lit up a cigarette.

“You can’t smoke in here,” his partner said.

“Correction: I can’t smoke out there. No one’s going to see me smoking in here, unless, I suppose, you’re going to turn me in?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“No problem.”

“Okay, then.”

The smoker remained where he was. The other guard grew restless and headed for the control room. Philby was somewhere in there.

“You know what they use this place for?” the smoker called out. “Those hologram kids.”

“DHIs,” the other called back.

“The kids, yeah. You gotta admit, they look freaking real.”

“I know.”

“They give me the weebies, to tell the truth. I mean, if you want guides, why not just hire real kids?”

“It’s Disney World, you moron. Don’t knock it: it’s a paycheck.” He entered the control room. Finn lost sight of him, concentrating instead on the smoker, who stood less than twenty feet from Jess, his back to her.