Chapter 1
Disney World Park in Florida is actually built a few feet above ground. Walt Disney had always disliked that fact that the Disney Land Park back in California provided no discreet way for employees leaving one area of the park to travel through the others. He did not like to see people from the futuristic part traveling through the rest of the park as they left, breaking the illusion of a fantasy world.
So he decided early on that this new park should have ample, hidden passageways for his workers to move through the grounds without being seen by patrons. Engineers solved this problem by building the park on top of a huge labyrinth of hallways and rooms. Officially this labyrinth only contains equipment, bathrooms, changing rooms, and the like.
Cameras have even been down within the bowels of the park reporting on how the place works, but oh so very well hidden are living quarters made for the best and least known employees.
The labyrinth below the park looks the same at almost any time of day. It doesn't take long for any new arrival to figure this out. 5 in the morning looks about the same as noon and midnight, with the exception of noise levels, traffic, and how many lights are on. 5 am, August 5th, 1996. One dark and brooding figure makes his way down the passage mumbling to himself. He slips into a door on the left side camouflaged to look just like part of the pipe covered wall. Behind this door is a large co-ed washroom complete with sinks, hair and hand dryers, stalls, benches, towels, and in beyond a small curtained doorway a shower room.
This man takes off his hat, tries to run the water in the sink. The faucets are motion activated; something he doesn't quite seem to have a grasp on. He continually tries to run the water growling when the faucet activates the spilt second he moves his hands out of the flow.
"To hell with it!"
He turns away and pulls the huge, black, heavy garment he was wearing over his head, throws it on a bench, then grabs some paper towels from the dispenser and wipes his brow. He stares into the mirror for a few minutes, scowling at himself or nothing at all.
Suddenly a shower head in the next room comes to life, causing him to jump a bit. He had thought he was alone in the rooms. He storms up to the curtain grabs it, and rips it back. Standing in the stream of water is a young, curvy woman with short brown hair already soaked. She doesn't scowl or scream or even try to cover herself. She simply smiles faintly and says,
"Good morning to you too. You must be Claude Frollo. They mentioned that you guys would be here soon."
Normally a man of such staunch Catholic belief would have been long gone before she could ever finish a sentence. But a series of shocks, a stressful and confusing move, and being thrust into a degrading job had caused not just slower reflexes but a few million questions that in her next breathe the young woman offered to answer. Frollo stood there staring at nothing for a few seconds.
"Well, in or out?"
That woke him up.
"What?"
"Do you want to come in here," she gestured around the shower room, "and talk, or stay out there?"
Frollo gives her a poisonous stare and yanks the curtain shut. But he doesn't stomp off. He leans against the wall wearing his usual frown.
"You've been here two weeks, right?"
No answer.
"That means that you've started working. Not all that pretty huh?"
He still doesn't say a word, though he can hear pop something open and her squeeze out soap.
"Well, that's one thing you kinda have to find your own way to deal with here. The people, the cameras, the noise, if you don't come up with something soon to keep you sane you'll go loony. I've seen it happen twice already."
"Why do they do this?"
There's a long pause after he says this.
"What?"
"Why do they do this?"
"I can't hear you over the shower head, you have to come in here if you want to talk."
He grabs his forehead and rakes his fingers down his face thinking, then why did you give me the choice in the first place? He wants those questions answered but he doesn't want to see a naked woman again. Ah, solution.
He pulls the red sash from his hat and blindfolds himself with it. It had been ripped away while leaving Paris and he had had to constantly tuck it back in. He slips past the curtain and carefully feels his way to the bench in the middle of the room, and sits facing away from the young woman. Again there's a long awkward pause before he speaks.
"Why did they do this?"
"They hate to waste."
He whips around.
"Waste?"
"When an animator creates a full fledged character, it becomes real in another world. Its creator can access that world. But, animators work for directors, and directors work for producers and studio executives. If a movie doesn't make the money it cost at the box office, or if it makes a lot of money, the animators are given an executive order. Bring your creation into our world. They'll work for us now. If you don't, you're out of a job. Unfortunately, your movie hasn't done so well. So they want you and the rest to make back that money they spent by having you play yourself secretly here in the park. But you've already figured that out."
"Obviously." He says through clenched teeth.
"But I bet you don't know just where you stand in here."
She turns off the shower and squeezes excess water out of hair before rubbing her skin dry with a towel. She wraps the towel around her and uses another to start drying her hair.
"You can take off that blindfold, I'm decent." She says as she leaves the shower room.
Frollo slowly removes the silk from his face, gets up and follows her out. She's standing in front of the mirrors, still rubbing her hair dry. Finally she throws the towel in a bin, and quickly brushes the tangles out of her short dark hair.
"Okay, where you stand in this park depends on where you work. First there's the outsiders, everyone who works in the part of the park that the public visits, and the insiders, we all stay out of sight down here. You already know you're an outsider. You one of the performers, you have to wander around and walk in the parades. There are also the people in the stores, the stalls, the games, the rides, and the restaurants, and a few guys that clean the place and the security guards. The insiders are mostly people in engineering, repairs, and logistics."
"Logistics?" he breaks his frown and gives her a quizzical look.
"They're those really annoying, high voiced guys that are always running around like headless chickens making sure everyone and everything gets where it needs to."
"On the outside-side of things, you are pretty high up there in terms of importance, but in here your about even with the rest of us."
"Do you, have to live down here too?"
"No, I'm allowed to have an apartment of my own, mostly because I have family and friends that would worry about me. But I hardly ever go there. They keep me on a tight schedule."
"What are you?"
"I work in one of the many gift shops that just about every single yuppie who comes to the park has to get about thirty things from. But I'm a trained animator."
"Animator!"
"They never actually gave me a job."
"You, your one of the ones that…"
"I told you, they didn't give me a job. Last time I was paid for any animation was a year ago when I got my last paycheck from an advertising firm I did work for."
She finishes fussing with her hair and grabs her robe, faces away from him, puts it on, pulls off the towel and ties it shut. She throws that towel in the bin as well and takes a few steps up to him.
"My name's Anya. Welcome to the Disney Team. If that term makes you nauseous better get some Pepto Bismo cause they use it every time they have bad news, which is about 200 times a day."
She smiles and raises her hand. He looks at it, then her, and finally grasps it.
"Do you know how long I'll have to stay here?"
"Don't know. All I know is that Mickey and Snow White where the first ones they brought over, and they're still stuck here. If you still want to take a shower you'd better hurry, this place will be packed by 6."
She walks out of the washroom, leaving him to wonder for the thousandth time since those strange men came knocking on his door just what has gone wrong in the world.