"Hold on a sec," her partner stopped her by reaching his hand out and holding her shoulder. "This could be another trick." He quickly turned around to look back at the couple who had given them the tip. But, they weren't near the exit where they'd left them last. He spun around, searching for them. "There they are!" he pointed to the couple who was hurrying away from the scene.
"We'll split up! You go check them out and I'll keep an eye on these two!"
The agent began to push his way through the crowd just as his partner was reaching out to touch the shoulder of the first couple. Her hand rested on something tangible and real. This couldn't be them unless they'd managed to get new disguises while they were in the line. "Yes?" the man asked, turning around upon feeling someone touching him.
"Sorry," the agent apologized. Then without explaining why she'd felt the need to touch his shoulder, she turned around and hurried after her partner, speaking loudly into her radio, "Bennet! This is Angela! We've been tricked! They're heading down your way, and they're not wearing the jackets!"
Bennet didn't have a second to ask why they'd allowed themselves to be so easily fooled but began giving out orders to establish a blockade. "Keep after them! Don't lose sight of them!"
Ro and Zee hurried through the crowd, briefly glancing behind them as they'd started running. "Slow down," Zee said, bringing their run down to just really long strides. Ro kept trying to look over her shoulder at the agents behind them but Zee encouraged her to look forward while he surreptitiously stole a few peeks at the agents behind them. Things appeared to be going as planned as both agents took off after the other couple, but now that one of the agents had stopped, it was clear that they hadn't fooled them entirely--the agents were splitting up. "Okay, this isn't going to work out so nicely… Run!"
Running-- it was something that she was good at. She bolted, with Zee right behind her. At least they'd gotten a little bit of a head start over the agents. But, as they saw Bennet anxiously waiting for them at the exit that led out of this area of the park it was clear that while they were fast runners they couldn't outrun the speed or radio waves.
"Uh-oh! Blockade!" Ro cried out. She began to turn around, feeling more inclined to take their chances with the agents behind them, but Zee turned her around as he grabbed her hand and continued to run with her toward Bennet's party.
It was so easy to admire him for couldn't for his bravery, or was his bravery just overconfidence in his own strength? His existence didn't seem as fragile as hers. Life to him was a matter of electrical charges and advanced computer programming. He could easily repair himself if he was damaged. She, however, was not indestructible. She knew that he was always concerned for her safety, but running right towards a blockade of agents didn't seem the safest route to her at the moment. Still, Zee usually knew what he was doing.
"Zee you sure this is a good idea?" she asked. She was sure that the only thing that was preventing Bennet from opening fire on them was all of the other people that were so closely packed around them. But, now as they'd started running through the crowd, everyone was parting away from them, thus removing their cover.
"I hope so," he replied.
"Hope so," isn't very comforting. How about a definitive answer?"
"That would be lying."
"We're doomed…" Ro sighed.
As they were getting closer, Bennet and his men raised their firing arms. Their hologram disguises weren't doing them any good as at least two people on Bennet's team had their holoviewers out. Not to mention the agents behind them were watching their every move. Still, as they were the only ones running, it was pretty clear that they were the ones. Their holograms disappeared, but not because Zee realized that they were useless. Whenever he was going to do something in which he would be extending his arms or legs to great lengths he removed his hologram.
The crowd around them had really thinned out. They were practically running out in the open now. In fact, everyone was making a circle around the agents and them. Most people thought that this was another daytime show, while others had clued in on the seriousness of the case and these were real agents after a real criminal and not some performance. These were the people standing at the back of the circle. They weren't running away for fear that they were wrong and might miss out on something completely awesome, but they also didn't want to risk getting too close to the action.
Open space, it was just what he needed. "Sorry Ro," he apologized in advance.
She never even realized what had happened. One moment she was running with Zee holding her hand, and then the next her leg was pulled out from under her and she was being swung around in a circle! Just as a parent would swing their child around as if they were an airplane. "Zeeeeeeeee!" she started to scream. Then after only two turns around he released her. Her arms were flailing everywhere and she was kicking her legs in the air as she went soaring over Bennet's party.
Her mind was torn between worrying about how she was going to land after being tossed several feet through the air, and having the agent's shoot her as she was helplessly flying over their heads. It happened so quickly that she didn't have a chance to see the agent's ducking for clearance as her body flew over their heads, followed by Zee's cat-like leap after her.
He'd tossed her first as a distraction then he'd taken a giant leap. His arms extended to catch Ro and pull her into him as his legs extended to give himself enough of a boost over the agents as well. His arms wrapped around her, and he pulled her in close to his body. Then his legs wrapped around her. Securely wrapped up in titanium armor, Ro felt themselves go rolling across the ground in their crash landing. When they stopped rolling, Zee stood up quickly, "Are you hurt?"
"No, but you're going to be…" she mumbled, shakily standing up. How many times before had she told him before he wasn't exactly what she'd call an airbag and that she wasn't a Frisbee?
He'd figured she'd be mad with him, but he could let her scold him later. Now they had to get away from the agents. "This way!" he pulled her behind him.
The contrast in the landscaping was most distinguished by the red colored rock formations that surrounded them and the log fencing. They were in a wilderness sort of country. There were really old saloon style buildings with upbeat piano music playing in the background. Still, they didn't spend much time in this area. They ran straight through and found themselves right back in the area with the buildings with the thatched roofs….
"We're running in circles!" Ro panted.
"I know," Zee replied. He could only hope that Bennet would be just as surprised. One thing he was noticing as of recently, was that Bennet was becoming better at predicting their movements. With any luck, Bennet would have thought ahead that Zee wouldn't be "stupid" enough to run around in a circle and that he would have set up defenses in another area of the park, rather than at the place where they'd originally been discovered. Still, as Bennet was right behind them he might have called ahead on his radio to tell his crew where it seemed like they were heading. And, as he had so many more crew members with him today it wouldn't be too difficult to move his agents around the park. Not to mention, everyone on the park staff was probably looking for them too.
From having been in this area once before Ro had a vague idea of where they were heading, but with Zee, rarely did anything ever turn out as it usually appeared. And she was right to not assume that she knew where Zee was taking them. At first she'd thought that he was going to lead them to the futuristic world where they'd blend in better, but as he recovered his hologram she knew this wasn't going to happen. Then, as he made a sharp turn and started leading her in deeper into the fantasy world, it was clear he was looking for some place here to hide.
They were coming up to medium sized building, no wait, it wasn't a building but a castle! Hadn't they already learned their lesson about getting stuck in small one-way turrets? The agents were behind them but as the princesses of the fantasy world were out signing autographs and taking pictures there was a large crowd of people that they had to push through, just as Zee and Ro had.
Zee pulled Ro behind a large vending cart. The bot at the cart began reciting the sales pitch until Ro gave it an icy look. The bot sensed her enmity and immediately left them to go bother someone else with its sales pitch.
"You really have a way with machines," Zee commented.
"I think it comes from experience."
Zee smiled, but then returned to the task of finding a good hiding spot as they couldn't stay crouched behind the vending cart for the rest of the day. His gaze was drawn to a dark doorway. There was a large wooden door concealed behind a pair of hanging flags. From the small, nearly invisible spider webs he could see that this door was not frequently used. He began to analyze the surrounding area. Was this a closet door, the back door to one of the many shops, or maybe it was just a large door for decorative purposes only?
"Follow me," he said, creeping out from behind the cart. He kept a careful eye out for Bennet. If they dashed for the door quickly, no one would see them.
They hurried to the door. Just from Zee's quick movements it was clear that they were in a hurry so as not to be seen. Ro tried to open it as she was accustomed to doing, but it was locked. Immediately she stepped back to let Zee do his thing, pressing herself up against the wall of the small entry way outside the door to stay hidden.
Zee looked for a port to patch into, but from what he could see, there was none! "There's no computer port," he commented, still searching for it.
"You're kidding me, right?" Ro asked as she stepped forward to look more closely at the door.
As Zee looked at the handle of the door he saw a small slit opening under the handle. This door had to be for decoration only. It hadn't be used in such a long time that no one had bothered to replace the old fashioned key-opened lock with a computerized system as they had with every other door in the park. But then again, why put a lock on a door unless it was meant to be kept shut at certain times, then open during others? He stared at the key opening. It had grooved slits, thus meaning that it was not just there to give the appearance of being locked, but that the matching key, could open it.
The hologram over his hand disappeared as a lock pick extended out of the tip of his finger. The lock clicked, signifying that Zee had unlocked the door. He pressed his whole weight up against the door. The large hinges had rusted shut so the door was resistant to open at first, but as Ro pressed her weight against it as well, the door slowly creaked open. As soon as the door was opened far enough for Ro to slip through, Zee minimized his body then followed after her. It was a tight squeeze, but they didn't want to attract a lot of attention by opening the door any wider.
Once inside Ro took a couple of steps backwards. Surprisingly there was plenty of room to stand around in so she doubted that this was just a small storage closet. From the small amount of light coming in through the door she couldn't yet decipher where they were. And as Zee shut the door behind them, relocking it, everything turned black.
"Where are you, Zee?" Ro whispered. She couldn't see him at all, as if she were blind. She was talking in a hushed tone so that no one would hear their voices behind the castle door.
"I'm here," he said quietly, reaching out for her hand. Initially he'd had his night vision on, but as there was no light at all in the room to remotely register, he switched to his infrared vision which illuminated everything on his visual sensors.
"Oh my," he commented, surprised.
'What?" Ro asked, a small hint of fear in her voice. Being unable to see anything made her feel especially vulnerable, not to mention they'd just entered blindly into an unknown environment. Who knew how many spiders were hanging right over he head at this very moment?
"We're in some passageway," he commented.
"I'll have to take your word for it considering I can't see anything."
Zee looked around for a light switch, but it was a wasted effort. No one would put a light switch in a convenient location where any person could see it and randomly turn off the lights. He looked around for any overhead light fixtures in general. There weren't any. "I don't see any light sources. And it might not be a good idea to turn on any lights in here. It might let the agents know where we are. But if you need light, I do have…"
Ro quickly reached out and put her hands over his chest. "Not so bright this time," she warned him.
"Oh right," he said remember the instance with the No-Techs. Ro removed her hands and a very faint glow emanated from his chest area. "How's this?" he asked.
"A little brighter. Even movie theaters give you more light to find your way out in the dark than this…" Zee increased the power to his light and it grew brighter. He might have thought to wait until Ro wasn't staring right at it when he did so, but it was a little late for that now.
"That'll be fine as soon as all these spots go away," Ro said, rubbing her eyes until the light spots went away. It'd felt like having someone shine a flashlight right in her eyes. She blinked a few times and then her eyes finally adjusted to the darkness. "So, what is this place?" Ro asked heading over toward a pedestal-type object.
Zee followed her, his light shining in whatever direction his was facing. He stood behind her so that she could see the object in front of her more clearly. On top of the pedestal was a large book under a glass display case. The cover of the book appeared to be made out of gold and was richly decorated with jewels.
"Looks like the cover of the Lindau Gospel or maybe the Lindisfarne or Kell manuscripts," Zee commented, referring to some ancient texts that also had richly decorated covers and illustrated pages. The heavy cursive and flourished letters made the title of the book hard to make out in the dark. Ro didn't bother to piece the letters together and see if Zee was correct, but continued forward in the passageway. As Zee didn't quite have his light facing the direction she took off in, she nearly tripped on the first step of a flight of an ascending staircase. Apparently, they weren't in a long passageway, but in another short entry way. Ro stepped up onto the first stair. "Wonder where this leads," she commented, taking another step. She climbed the stairs quickly with Zee's light now illuminating the area in front of her.
Her head hung down as she carefully watched where she was placing her feet. When she looked up at the top of the stairs, she had to cover her mouth to prevent herself from screaming in startled fright. The freakish figure hung in front of her behind the glass window. It looked like the dead body of someone who's just been hung. But, after looking at the figure, she saw that this was not a corpse, but just a doll, one that was falling apart from years and years of neglected maintenance or proper preservation.
The doll had long blonde hair with matching lashes, and was suspended by a thin line from the ceiling. One of her feet had broken off and was completely missing and her dress looked moth eaten and grayed. Time had certainly ruined the youth of the young girl that the doll was portraying. It especially seemed saddening as the doll looked like it wanted to dance, but couldn't because its foot was missing and it was hanging dead still from having not been disturbed in years. The forest animals around her were in worse shape. The fur-like coverings had completely corroded through exposing their mechanical skeletons and wirings. It was sickening. The young man in the background who was secretly watching the damsel through the bushes looked almost as awful. Rather than having a nice head of hair, it looked like a rat had crawled up on his head and died. Just what exactly was this display that they were looking at?
"What is all this?" Ro asked.
"It appears to have been some kind of gallery or attraction at some time. From the looks of things, it hasn't been open in years."
"Why do you suppose that is?" Ro couldn't help but ask. While the scene looked fairly gruesome at first, with proper lighting and some nice background music and after a major refurbishing job, she would imagine that walking through a castle and watching a princess dance in a forest would actually be kind of nice.
"While I don't have the official details, the first thing that comes to mind is that this isn't in compliance with regulations for handicap accessibility."
"And just what is that supposed to mean?" Ro glared at him. He should know by now that she hated it when he got all technical like this.
"It's not hoverchair accessible. You'd never be able to get a hoverchair through here."
"So?"
"It's the kind of thing that people with too much free time file lawsuits about. They go around looking for disability cases to file claims under, and ruin things for everyone else just so they can get a couple of dollars by pretending to be unfairly discriminated against."
"I'm not following you."
Zee searched his database of files to see if he had news articles or specific files that were referenced to his knowledge of such regulations. There were two "instances" or files that were referenced to this bit of knowledge. He recited one of the instances for Ro, "Say you go into a public restroom."
"Oh heaven forbid…" Ro interrupted. Public restrooms were the most disgusting things ever. And it was so unfortunate that they were forced to visit them sometimes because they were always on the run.
"And while in the restroom you notice that there are not toilet seat liners."
"Okay…and your point Is?" Ro urged him to get to the moral of the story. He'd barely told more than a sentence of the story, but already she thought she could tell that he wasn't going to be getting to the point soon from the way he was already going off on frivolous details.
"That is the point."
"You know, you're supposed to be helping me understand this, not making me more confused with more random stories…"
"There's no toilet seat covers because some disabled person noticed that the dispenser in the handicapped stall wasn't mounted at the regulated standard height for toilet seat cover dispensers in handicap stalls, so they sued the person who's responsible for the restroom maintenance. And as there was another law that said that it was not required to have toilet seat covers, the person then decided to get rid of them entirely."
"Well, why not just fix the problem and put them at the right height?"
"That would cost money. And if they're not required to have them, why go to the trouble?"
"So what would happen if the company just said that they weren't going to do a thing about it?"
"Then they'd be charged a large fine every day that the problem wasn't remedied, or they'd be forced to pay settlement to every person who complained about the problem."
"And if they couldn't afford to pay that kind of money?"
"Then they'd go bankrupt or would be forced to close."
"Well, that's just stupid! What jerks… They make everyone else have to do without because someone mounted it at 45" from the floor rather than 36"?" She was making up the measurements to get her point across. She doubted even Zee knew the correct measurements. The story he was telling didn't seem like the kind where he had all of the factual data to go with it.
"You can't just say that. You have to look at things from their point of view. Do you think they want to be handicapped?"
"No, but still! Why don't they just ask nicely for them to lower or raise the dispensers rather than making such a big deal about it?"
"Money Ro. They do it for the creds."
Ro thought she finally understood now. "So you're saying because this isn't handicap accessible, because of the stairs, that someone probably sued this place because they couldn't go through the attraction so the place just closed it because they didn't want to remodel it?"
"That would be my guess."
While it would have seemed deserving of the company to have to pay royalties in a law settlement, it still seemed more wrong that everyone else should be denied this experience as a result of that. "That's so stupid!" Ro said angrily.
He could see that she was definitely upset about this, so he had to calm her down. "Now, it was just an idea. We don't know for sure if this is what happened…"
"I really wouldn't be surprised if it were though… But then again, I don't think she broke her leg from just hanging there for all of these years. Seems like they weren't taking good care of it when it was open."
"Probably didn't seem worth the maintenance costs."
Rather than uselessly debating the issue, Ro continued forward, but stopped after having only taking a few steps. "Zee, before we go any further, should we be worried about setting off any alarms or laser traps?" she asked cautiously.
Zee turned on each of his different alarm detection devices. There weren't any vid cameras mounted to the ceiling or on the walls. He didn't detect any red glowing laser lines on the floor or at chest level height. The hallway they were standing in was completely bare. Other than the lock on the door, there didn't appear to be any kind of security system. "There's doesn't appear to be any kind of monitoring system. I would assume that it's completely safe to go forward."
"Seriously?" Ro asked. "Nothing?"
Zee rescanned the area just to be sure. " Nothing. I don't see anything."
"What luck! We can stay here for the rest of the day then!" she announced happily.
"You may be right," he agreed. With no cameras or security system for them to set off, they could just stay there for a couple of hours or until Bennet left. But, then how could they get out of the park after hours without being seen? Someone would surely notice them if they were the only ones leaving the park late in the middle of the night—unless they tried to pretend that they were security guards who were off at the end of their shift. It might work, if Bennet didn't leave standing orders for the park to watch for them to do such a thing. Or maybe they could wait over night and sneak out of the park the next day? No—that wouldn't work, he couldn't make Ro wait things out that long. While he knew
she wouldn't mind spending the night in a castle, he couldn't let her go without food for that many hours as he didn't want to risk sneaking in and out of the castle to get food. Not to mention he knew Ro was eventually going to get bored with the window displays. His internal conscience told him not to, but he couldn't help but thinking that if he were asked to bet how long it would be until she did get bored, his answer would be around two hours and thirteen minutes.
"If we don't come up with any other way to get out of the park before it closes, then I'll consider it, but I'd rather get out of here as soon as possible and leave Bennet wandering around the park until closing, thinking that we're still in it hiding somewhere."
"Well, I'm out of ideas for the time being. Let me know if you think of something…" Ro trailed off as she went searching for the next window.Not only was she curious to see if there were any more displays, and what they were, but the further they moved away from the door the less likely someone would overhear them talking behind it. Zee followed behind her, just like a homeless puppy.
Keeping her hand on the right wall for stability she stopped when her hand felt a depression in the wall, and then the smooth, cold glass of another display window.
Zee took his place behind her, but she still couldn't see into the window. "I think we should risk a little more light," she commented. Zee turned up his light even more. Instead of having a flashlight effect he now had a lantern light effect coming from his chest.
The scene inside of this window was of the princess heading up a miniature flight of stairs, following an iridescent pom-pom on a metal wire that was sticking out of the wall. Ro then finally realized what the title of the book and been, and what the theme of the windows were. "It's Sleeping Beauty," she informed Zee.
"Sleeping Beauty?" he repeated, a little confused. "That doesn't make any sense… I thought we'd decided this was Snow White's castle because of the wishing well that was off on the side of the castle?"
Ro realized now that she'd assumed wrong when she'd told Zee that. It hadn't actually been a "we decided" type of discussion, but that she'd told him what to think in this matter. But, she hadn't just told him this was Snow White's castle, "just because." She actually had several facts to back up her opinion on this matter. Mainly her priority reasoning was that there was a wishing well, but also from what she'd seen of the movies, this castle didn't look like it could belong to any other princess. After all, wasn't Sleeping Beauty's castle supposed to have a really tall tower? And didn't Cinderella's castle have three tall, rectangular towers with a really large clock on the center one… Or at least based on the Cinderella TV series, Cinderella's castle was supposed to be all pink! And this castle didn't have the French styling with the large buttresses and domed dance hall to belong to the wannabe-anamorph princess.
"Guess I was wrong…" she casually declared.
"Maybe that's why they closed it? So people didn't get confused as to whose castle it was."
"Then why didn't they redo the interior to match?" Ro began to ask, but then she answered her own question, "oh right, money…"
They moved onto the next window. Actually, it wasn't a window but a bunch of boards placed up over the window. Ro noticed for the first time that there were mounted display cases next to the windows, containing colored storybook pages describing the event in the window scenes. The story for this window said that it should have been a scene of the heroic prince slaying the evil dragon.
As Ro eagerly moved onto the next window, she nearly fell down a flight of stairs, but luckily Zee caught her and saved her from breaking a leg. The stairs were heading down, which meant that they were nearing the end of the castle tour, and that the story was coming to a close. "We're getting close to the exit, we should be a little more careful," Zee reminded her. He turned down his light just a little to be sure that if they suddenly did turn a corner and there was a window leading to the outside, that no one would see the light inside. So far there hadn't been any windows, but they could never be sure.
The next display window showed the scene of where the prince was bending over to awaken the princess. His lips were less than an inch away from hers in the scene. Ro almost wanted to tell Zee to break the glass so she could rush forward and pull their heads together the rest of the way. It just seemed so disappointing that he was so close to kissing his princess and breaking the spell, but that he was frozen still in time. It was like the fairies accidentally put him to sleep along with the rest of the castle…
"Next window," Ro announced moving on. She knew how the story ended and that if they hurried on there would be a happy ending waiting for them. And, she was right. The last window was of the prince dancing with the princess. The princess's dress sparkled when Zee's light illuminated it, which made the painted background seem dull in comparison. Just a few feet below them, down another flight of stairs, Ro could see a very faint crack of light coming in from what had to be the exit door.
"The end," she announced in reference to the story, and their journey through the castle.
"Should we go through it again from the beginning?" Zee asked her.
Ro didn't reply though. The last scene of the princess dancing with the prince had stirred up several thoughts and ideas in her mind. This wasn't the first time they'd seen dancing princesses and princes today—and it wasn't going to be the last.
"I have an idea of how to get out of here," she announced excitedly, then quickly added. "What time is it?"
Zee checked his internal clock, "It's 5:38 p.m." He left off the seconds unit as well as the fact that they were in the Pacific coast time zone.
"When did you say that the evening parade ran at?"
He hadn't mentioned the time exactly earlier but that didn't matter. "There's one at 6:30 parade and at 8:30, and one more at…"
Ro interrupted him but not with the intention to be rude. It was more because she suddenly began to talk out loud to herself. "Six thirty, that gives us less than an hour…"
"Less than an hour to do what?" he asked. For once he was surprised that Ro had come up with an ingenious escape plan before he had.
"Okay, here's the plan…"