“What’s this?” Finn asked.
“Anything flashing has recorded temperature swings that exceed acceptable limits—in this case, ten degrees.”
Philby used the touch screen to navigate into each of the flashing pavilions. He called out times and dates for Finn to write down.
“Can’t we just print it out?” Finn said.
“I don’t see how, no. I don’t think so.”
Finn grabbed a pen and paper and began taking down the dictated data. But Philby could talk faster than Finn could write and he quickly fell behind.
Now that he had the hang of it, Philby was flying through screen after screen of maintenance reports.
“You see what’s happening?” Philby said.
“No,” Finn said sharply. “I can’t keep up, and even if I could, it’s not like I have time to think about what I’m writing down. So, no. Emphatically, no.”
“The times,” Philby said. “The times!”
Finn had written down dozens of times. Philby was still spouting off even more times and numbers.
“I’m sorry,” Finn said.
“We need more than five minutes,” Philby announced. “This is the—”
Voices.
He checked his watch.
“Not possible!” Philby whispered frantically.
“What?” Finn whispered back.
“Seven minutes! We’ve been here seven minutes!”
“Not possible,” Finn said.
“I just said that!” Philby complained.
They both heard the door come open downstairs. The voices grew louder and more easily understood. Security patrols traveled in twos. Judging by the voices this was a man-and-woman team. They thumped their way up the stairs.
Finn pulled Philby into one of the office cubicles and sat him down on a chair next to him. He hung his arms at his side and indicated for Philby to do the same. He hung his head, so that he looked half-asleep. Philby mirrored Finn’s position.
“Door was locked,” the woman said. “It’s not like we’ve got anything to worry about. Could be a faulty wire. Coulda been somebody shook the door or something. I’ve seen that throw off a false alarm before.”
“Check it out!” the man said.
Out of the corner of his eye, Finn saw the man approach.
“What’s this?”
“Well, I’ll be,” the woman said, now standing directly in front of Finn. “These are those things. You know: those new things they installed. What-cha-ma-call-its.”
“Halo…” the man said, fishing for the word. “Hollow?”
“Holograms!” the woman shouted, as if she’d won a game show competition.
“What are they doing here?” the man said.
“Whaddaya mean whadda they doing here?” she barked. “It’s engineering, you moron. I’ve always wanted to try this.” She waved her hand through Finn. It passed smoothly, with only a brief static buzz as her hand swiped through Finn’s upper body. “Whoa, is that amazing.”
She lifted her arm, about to do the same thing to Philby. But if she tried to wave her hand through Philby, it would likely not pass through. In all likelihood she’d knock Philby right off the chair.
Finn lifted his head and moved it robotically. “Welcome to Disney’s Hollywood Studios,” he said.
The guard jumped back, startled. “Jeez!” she snapped.
“Welcome to Disney’s Hollywood Studios!” Finn repeated, continuing to move his head in the same, jerky motions.
“Look what you done!” the male guard said. “Don’t mess with those things. Who knows what kind of trouble you might make?”
The female guard eyed Finn curiously. “I’d say this fella has a chip loose.”
The male guard chuckled.
“You don’t suppose it coulda been them tripped the alarm,” she said.
“These two? You’re joking, right? You just waved your hand through that one.”
“Yeah,” she said, “you’re right.” But her tone of voice indicated otherwise.
“More than likely, Mr. Potato Head again. He loves to mess around.”
“Or Tigger,” she countered. “I’ve seen him snooping around lately, out of bounds, back in here where it’s CAST MEMBERS ONLY. I caught him following Ursula the other night. It was like he was spying on her. And when I accused him, he got all in a knot, like I had it all wrong.”
“Knowing you, you probably did.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence there, big guy.”
The two roamed the room for a minute, checking under desks and doing a thorough job of securing the office.
The man spoke into his radio asking whoever was on the other end to “activate the motion sensors in Base.” Only a few seconds passed before a voice came back confirming that the sensors were now active, and telling the guard he had thirty seconds in which to leave the building.