Crowns of the Kingdom
Chapter 10: Into the Depths
"Let's go this way now."
"We've already been that way."
"Well, what about over here?"
"Oh, no, dear, that was the first area we checked. Let's try across the way."
"This is no way to conduct a patrol. We're just going in circles!"
"Maybe we should get a map and mark it with chalk as we go. Do you think that would help?"
"Ssh! Not so loud, dear—Maleficent might be listening!"
The three Good Fairies were taking their assignment from Mickey very seriously, which was to say they were being flustered and inefficient about it. When facing the forces of evil head-on, they were paragons of competence and teamwork; in less dire circumstances, they tended to be doddering and distractible and peevish with each other. At the moment, they were ambling rather aimlessly through Fantasyland, covering the same ground several times in their wanderings and blithering about it to each other continuously, at no small cost to their alertness.
In fact, when the tiny rent opened in the world and the Dispiration slipped through, they missed it entirely.
Of all the weak, pathetic idea-ghosts that Maleficent had brought forth from Inpotentia, it was among the weakest and most pathetic, so bereft of form that its only appearance, even after being bolstered by the Wicked Fairy, was of a semi-transparent blur floating in the air. Even if anyone had seen it, they could easily have mistaken it for a small spot of heat-shimmer hovering just over the pavement of Fantasyland as it warmed in the morning sunlight.
Maleficent had released it into the park as a test, supposing that even unforeseen consequences would be of no concern when the subject was as feeble as this.
The Dispiration huddled in the Fantasyland courtyard, reflexively acclimating itself to its new surroundings as an amoeba adapts to changes in the temperature of its pond. It reached out with what passed for its awareness…and discovered that it had landed in a paradise of sorts.
The construction of Disneyland had been a minor miracle in itself. It had taken exactly a year—an impossible feat by any reasonable standard given the size, the complexity, and the novelty of the place. Yet Walt Disney had made it happen, with a determination no less powerful and relentless than the creativity that led to him envisioning the park in the first place. No obstacle could thwart his will to overcome it, no setback was impervious to his imaginative genius. And his employees, instead of resenting him for the insane demands he made on their time and energy, were inspired by his vision and infected by his enthusiasm. They rose to meet every challenge, and thus the impossible was achieved. Passion and ingenuity and sheer dogged tenacity filled in where feasibility fell short, with the result that Disneyland had the raw stuff of dreams baked into its very bricks.
And the Dispiration, like all its kindred, was a dream starved of substance.
It found itself surrounded by the very thing it had yearned for since its halfway inception, and it wasted no time in feeding, absorbing enough sustenance to create for itself an identity of sorts, and a definite form. Because it was in Fantasyland, the essence of imagination that it took in was channeled along the lines of the fantastic—of fable and fairy tale and mythology. The shape it gathered itself into was sooty and imp-like, with a bestial head and wiry tail; it moved on two legs or four with equal ease. It looked like something a beautiful but vain and wicked Queen might have manifested during her early experiments with sorcery, or like an inhabitant of one of the darker forests in Wonderland. The black god Chernobog might have summoned it for an evening of sadistic revelry.
It stretched its new body and sniffed the morning breeze, feeling the exhilaration of existence. It had only the rudiments of sentience, but it could remember, and learn, and form attachments. It remembered the horned woman who had sent it to this cornucopia of a place. It realized that she had made good on her promise to supply it with the reality that it craved. It discovered itself in possession of a new, captivating emotion:
Loyalty!
The Dispiration scuttled into the shade of a building, where instinct told it that it would be less detectable to potential enemies, and began searching for a way to serve the one it was beginning to view as "mistress."
They were skeptical of Professor von Drake's grim pronouncement at first—not because they doubted whether Maleficent's spell could have caused something as drastic as Disneyland's disconnection from reality, but because they didn't see why the swirl of colors on the Cosmoscope 5000 monitor should be taken as diagnostic. As Minnie put it: "Don't try to convince a bunch of film stars that the camera doesn't lie."
They hastily exited the lab in order to confirm or disprove von Drake's theory with their own eyes. And at first, it indeed seemed to be a false alarm. The clear sky of a Southern California summer's day spread above them as they stood in the Tomorrowland entrance promenade, with no hint of any color other than innocent cerulean blue. But as Mickey tracked the bright expanse from its zenith down toward the horizon, he shifted his focus for a split second, and in that split second he saw it.
His gasp must have been very loud, because Minnie said "What? What's wrong?"
"I think…" Mickey said vaguely, staring firmly at the eastern sky, daring it to transform again. What had happened to make it change the first time? Had he only imagined it? He squinted, trying to see past his assumptions about what the sky looked like.
As if he were emerging from a fog bank—or entering one—Mickey saw the flat blue of the daylit sky dissolve into the multicolored turbulence he remembered from the lab. It covered the entire bowl of the heavens, filling his field of view. Looking at it was like staring into the heart of a fire opal the size of a planet. It was so chaotic and alien, it should have been terrifying…especially in light of what it signified. But it was also beautiful in its way, with an undercurrent of familiarity. Mickey found it quite easy, actually, to soothe the pounding of his heart.
"Oh, wow," he said with surprising calmness. He lowered his gaze to meet the eyes of his companions, noticing with interest that the blue sky returned to his peripheral vision as he did so. He started to piece together how to alternate his perspective to choose which version of the sky he saw.
"Professor von Drake was right," he said. "What we saw on his screen…it's real. And I think I can show you how to see it."
"Please do," Donald told him flatly. "I'm not having any luck at all."
Mickey pointed east, to the Rocket to the Moon attraction building and the tall spire of the Moonliner. Beyond them could barely be glimpsed snatches of the earthen berm that surrounded the park, isolating it visually from the outside world. Now it seemed that separation was becoming more than mere psychology. "Start looking there, at the Moonliner. Then look past it, where you can see a little bit of the berm. Have you all got it?" There was a chorus of yeses. "Okay, now try looking past the berm. There's nothing there to see, but pretend there is. Focus on the space outside the park. If I'm right—"
"Oh my word!" Minnie exclaimed. "It's just like it was on the monitor down in the lab!"
One by one, they all achieved the right depth of perspective…and varying degrees of panic. Mickey quickly told them to shift focus back inside the park, and they settled down.
"What d'ya think it means?" Goofy fretted.
"I already told you what it means. Kids these days, they never listen," said Ludwig von Drake, walking up unexpectedly behind them. "It means we gotta do something about it, that's what it means!"
"We are doing something about it," Mickey informed him. "We've been doing something about it, in fact."
"What exactly is going on, anyway? Who's attacking us? Is it that crazy Cruella De Vil? Because I already told her I'm not gonna be a judge at her next fashion show."
Mickey made a small noise of dismissal in his throat. "If only it were her! Actually, it's Maleficent. She's trying to ruin the park through magical time manipulation—you may not believe this, but it's supposed to be the year 2005. You don't remember it because…well, it's complicated. If you go stand in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle and count the turrets, you'll understand."
"So, you saying I should do that then?" asked von Drake.
"Actually…yeah! Go do that, and then go back to your lab and research temporal anomalies. And parallel dimensions. Anything that has to do with what you showed us on the Cosmoscope. In the meantime, we'll be investigating that suspicious spot in the Submarine Lagoon."
"You can count on me, kiddo! Good luck in the water over there!" With that, von Drake parted company with them, moving at an ambling pace toward Central Plaza while whistling "The Green With Envy Blues."
"Well, let's get on over to the subs," said Mickey. "I wasn't just saying that to get rid of him, you know!"
The Submarine Lagoon lay close to the border between Fantasyland and Tomorrowland…which was perhaps why the Submarine Voyage attraction flirted with the trappings of fantasy—mermaids, a sea serpent, the lost continent of Atlantis—even as it proclaimed the triumph of modern technology that allowed people to visit the Arctic ice sheet from underneath.
The submarines were lined up at the loading dock: eight vessels, each some forty feet long and painted a forbidding battleship gray. Mickey realized that he had been subconsciously expecting the bright yellow paint job, suggestive of exploratory ventures rather than military ones, that had been applied in the Eighties. He waved the rest of the Sensational Six along the dock but stopped them just before they boarded the sub at the front of the line, the Sea Wolf.
"Remember what happened at the Rivers of America?" he said. "Something tells me we should be prepared to have it happen here too. Fortunately, this time we'll be in an armored boat." He tapped the hull of the submarine with his foot, letting the resultant tinny thunk make his point. "Unfortunately, that won't help us much if we don't know how to operate a real submarine. Donald, I believe this is where your Navy experience will come in handy. They ever teach you to drive one of these things?"
Donald blinked, missing a beat. "Of course!" he said a little too perkily. "It'll be a piece of cake!" He gulped nervously.
Mickey—and everyone else—missed the duck's apprehension altogether. "Great! I'll let you take the helm. Goofy, you man the periscope, and Daisy, you're in charge of sonar. Pluto can be our mascot!"
"Ahem!" Minnie said coyly. "Aren't you forgetting someone, Mickey?"
"Don't be silly, Minnie! I could never forget my best girl! You and I will be watching out the portholes together for any sign of the Rocket Crown. It was your sharp eyes that found the Mouseketeer Crown for us, after all."
"I hoped you had something like that in mind," she said warmly. "But let's make sure we keep our eyes on the water, and not on each other!"
"You got that right," Mickey agreed. "Well, this is it, gang! All aboard!"
One by one, they climbed into the submarine. Mickey closed the hatch after them, and with a hiss of fine bubbles, they were on their way around the Lagoon.
And in the shadowy recesses of a nearby juniper hedge, a sooty, imp-like creature watched them go.
"Well, well, what have we here?" Maleficent said smoothly, her eyes locked on the orb that topped her staff. "It seems our little test run has succeeded beyond all expectations. This is encouraging."
Diabolo cawed a query, shifting nervously on his perch. He didn't like the Dispirations crowding his home, and was glad to hear that his mistress considered the test successful—it meant she would be sending them away.
"It's found them," she explained. "The mouse and his little friends. They've foolishly gone and put themselves in quite a vulnerable position." She had been using the orb to keep an eye on the pioneering Dispiration and, when it had stopped creeping about and stared fixedly, had naturally become curious about what had seized its undivided attention. That it was Mickey Mouse and his comrades boarding a submarine and taking it on its trackbound journey was just the icing on the cake.
It took only a small exertion of her power to call the creature back to her lair. It fought at first, none too eager to leave the luxuriant atmosphere of nourishing wonder that was Disneyland, but it wasn't a patch on her. She dragged it through the barrier between her headquarters and the physical world and watched with cool interest as it shivered on the stone floor in the company of its less fully realized kin.
"Do not attempt to defy me again," she muttered under her breath, not knowing and little caring if it could actually hear her…or understand. She wondered—what would become of it, now that she had removed it from the park? Would it revert to being a formless spot of nothing? Or had it made that body truly its own?
She hadn't even considered a third possibility. Not only did it retain its shape, but the other Dispirations nearby seemed to grow stronger from the proximity, as if it actually possessed more reality than it needed and was giving it off like body heat, warming its brethren. In any case, it was clear that the environment of the park was a fuel of sorts to her new servants. The very act of sending them to do her bidding would seem to them to be the fulfillment of her side of the bargain. It was a perfect situation.
Given that, she saw no reason to hold them back any longer. She held out a thin, pale hand to the corporeal Dispiration and let it clamber up onto her forearm, where it clung like a ferret. The others squirmed in its sudden absence, craving its solidity.
"The ones you saw just before I summoned you back here," Maleficent addressed the creature, "are my enemies." It made a thin hiss, the first sound it had produced in its short existence: it understood well the concept of enemies! "Yes, indeed. Now listen well. I appoint you the leader of your kind. You will teach them how to use the existence they will gain shortly, when I send all of you out into the world. And you will show them who the enemies are, so that all of you together may do what you can to destroy them."
The new chief of the Dispirations wriggled happily at the thought of a task whereby it could please its Mistress. Again, Maleficent opened a gateway into Disneyland, letting a smile of triumph spread on her face as the horde poured through.
It was awkward, at first, inside the submarine—Mickey's specialized assignments were all but useless when applied to what was, after all, a simple ride vehicle rather than a functional underwater transport. The only one who had much of anything to do was Donald, and even his responsibilities were limited to the uncomplicated controls of the sub. With the track making any sort of steering device patently unnecessary, the only possible variables were the vehicle's speed (moving or stopped) and the pre-recorded narration (playing or turned off). If he wanted to get really wild, he could supply his own narration via the cabin address speakers.
Everyone else, of course, had to take a seat in the cabin and peer out the portholes with Mickey and Minnie. It was hardly an onerous duty—conditions inside the submarine were somewhat cramped, but it was easy enough to focus on the aquatic panorama outside, which looked all the roomier for the way it faded into blue-tinted haziness with distance. The submarine coasted smoothly around the sunlit Lagoon and its fair imitation of a tropical coral grove replete with dazzlingly colored fishes, snails in rococo shells, and octopi lazily waving suckered tentacles.
"I missed this ride," Minnie mumbled, as if to herself. The Submarine Voyage had closed in 1998, a victim of grand retooling plans that hadn't quite come together. (Fortunately, newer, sounder plans had eventually been made.)
The speakers crackled. "This is your captain speaking," Donald said playfully, barely intelligible between his speech impediment and the static of the sound system. "We are now traveling through liquid space on a voyage to the North Pole!" He exploded in laughter.
"Good grief," said Daisy. "He sounds like he's been waiting his whole life to say that."
"He's got nothing better to do," Mickey shrugged. "Get ready, everyone, we're about to 'dive.'"
The cruise around the reef was only the first part of the ride, after which the sub moved through a waterfall curtain into an artificial cave with much more dramatic scenery. A sheet of masking bubbles disguised the transition as a "dive" to greater depth.
They were passing through the graveyard of sunken treasure ships, with the five in the cabin scanning intently for signs of the Rocket Crown, which would be easy to miss if it were heaped among the fake gold and jewels.
"Now, I want everyone to remember: there are no such things as mermaids," Donald went on, despite the lifelike figures of mermaids swimming around the scene. It was at best an imprecise rendition of the attraction's script, but he obviously wasn't going for accuracy.
Suddenly, the Sea Wolf lurched, eliciting startled squeals from the passengers. More bubbles flooded from the external ports, obscuring the scene. The vessel's internal machinery emitted odd groaning noises and the cabin lights abruptly shut off, leaving only the dim illumination that filtered in through the portholes. Everything tilted, followed by a powerful jolt that threw them all from their seats. Then the sub shuddered to a halt.
"Gawrsh, what happened?" came Goofy's wail in the darkness.
"We must have jumped the track," said Mickey. "Everybody stay put." It wasn't the end of the world—they could continue their search via the maintenance catwalks that spanned the cave above the water, and worry about re-railing the submarine later. Mickey got to his feet and began groping his way along the canted floor toward the nose of the boat. He hadn't gotten very far when the cabin was suddenly bathed in red light from a bare bulb on the wall.
This made it technically easier to see, but harder to navigate. The one-dimensional quality of the dim light distorted his sense of perspective, making the cabin seem the wrong size, though it shifted between being too large and too small. He kept missing the handrails he was reaching for, or catching them with his wrist (ouch!) instead of his hand.
"Uh-oh…" came Donald's forlorn voice over the speakers.
Mickey finally managed to reach the front of the sub and climb the short ladder to the raised operator's platform. The reason for Donald's distress became immediately evident—the simple, straightforward controls had been replaced with a broad panel covered with rows of dials, switches, and ominously blinking red and green lights.
Mickey gave a low whistle of astonishment, but he had supposed something like this might happen. "I guess we didn't exactly jump the track after all," he said. "No problem though, right? You know how to start it back up?"
"Uuuhhhhhhhhhhh…" Donald stalled, his eyes flickering over the daunting array of controls. He put one hand over his eyes and made as if to stab randomly at the panel with the other.
Mickey caught his finger. "You don't know how, do you?" he accused.
Donald shook his head and grinned sheepishly.
"Donald! You said you knew how to drive a real submarine!"
"But Mickey! I didn't want to disappoint you!"
Mickey smacked himself between the eyes and slowly wiped his whole face with his hand. He forced a cheerful expression. "That's okay! We'll figure it out! I mean, how hard can it be? These things are built by the military—they have to be idiot-proof!"
He probably would have chosen his words more carefully if he had realized that the cabin address system was still turned on. The four members of the party still in the belly of the sub traded nervous looks.
Through a certain amount of trial and error, Mickey and Donald found the controls for the interior lights (a major improvement over the red bulbs), the klaxons, the exterior spotlights, and, in one memorable instance, the torpedoes. Finally, they managed to get the submarine's engines running. A little more experimentation, and the Sea Wolf cranked itself up off the sea bottom and began moving forward again. Luckily, it was not appreciably damaged by the minor crash, and the steering controls turned out to be more intuitive than they had seemed at first.
Mickey returned to the cabin, where he found the rest of his friends blinking in disbelief at their transformed surroundings. The space was still occupied mostly by a double row of flip-down seats corresponding to the portholes, but it had sprouted several additional facilities—a sonar surveillance station, a periscope, and a set of bunks to the rear.
"This is incredible!" Daisy gawked. "It's just like a real submarine!"
"I think it is a real submarine," Goofy observed. He made a start. "We'd better get to our posts!" He lunged for the periscope station, only to crash into the swivel seat and rotate at high speed for several seconds, hollering, until he ran out of momentum. But that was typical. Before long, they were well underway, cruising perhaps a dozen feet (or, more appropriately, two fathoms) above the ocean floor, each of them attentive to his or her assigned tasks.
Minnie was round-eyed as she stared out of her porthole at an underwater tableau that was all too real for comfort. "Where do you suppose we are, Mickey?" she asked. "How will we get back?"
"We're still in the Submarine Lagoon, of course," he replied. "This is just like what happened with the Rivers of America before…it's still the park attraction, but it's real at the same time."
"Hmm…" Daisy mused, tapping at the sonar screen. "We're picking up on something moving out there. It's a lot smaller than we are, but moving at a pretty good clip. Oh! Now there's another one! They're practically on top of us!"
Mickey pulled back from his porthole in fright as a long, streamlined shape glided past. "Sharks!" he yelped. He quickly composed himself. "I mean, look! Sharks!"
There were several of them, attracted to the vicinity of the submarine by the vibrations of its engines. Most were blues and white-tips, although one bore the unmistakable silhouette of a hammerhead. They seemed content to circle the sub, lightly nosing the hull from time to time as though curious about it. At first, Pluto sniffed eagerly at the portholes every time one neared, but soon gave up when he realized that he couldn't smell through the glass.
"Do you think they're real?" Minnie wondered.
"They certainly move like real sharks," said Daisy. "I'm not about to stick my arm outside to see if they bite it, though."
"Don't be afraid, Minnie," Mickey said helpfully. "They can't get in."
"I'm not afraid!" she protested. "I know they can't get in…but what about when we find the Rocket Crown? One of us will have to go out to pick it up!"
Mickey pursed his lips. "You're right. Goofy! See if we've got an armored diving suit onboard, would you?"
"Sure thing, Mickey!" Goofy said, trying to salute and managing to smack both his hand and his head on the periscope eyepiece in the process. "Ow! A-hyuk!" He then got up and went to busy himself in the storage lockers at the far end of the cabin.
"I can hardly see a thing with all these sharks in the way," Minnie complained. "Can't we scare them away? Without hurting them, of course."
"You know, I think we can!" Mickey mused. "If this submarine is the realization of the one simulated in the ride, there should be a way to electrify the hull specifically in order to drive away dangerous animals." He called toward the front of the vessel. "Donald! Hey, Donald!"
Donald stuck his head into view. "What is it, Mickey?"
"See if you can turn on the repellent charge to get rid of these sharks. Just a low setting at first—we only want to scare them away."
"Can do, pal!" Donald agreed, disappearing again. After a moment, the sharks all seemed to startle at once and swiftly swam away.
"Thanks, Donald!"
"Huh? But I didn't do anything!"
"Then what scared the sharks away?" asked Minnie.
"Probably this new thing I'm detecting here," said Daisy with concern, pointing to her sonar screen. "Mickey, I think you'd better come look at this!"
Mickey and Minnie both crowded over Daisy's shoulder, watching on her monitor as the small, friendly blip that indicated the Sea Wolf headed straight for a huge, shifting something.
"What is it?" asked Minnie.
"I can't imagine," Daisy admitted. "I don't think it's quite solid because of the way it keeps shifting, see? But you'd think anything less than solid would disperse, and it's not doing that either."
"Well, whatever it is, we're about to crash right into it!" Mickey exclaimed. "Donald! Hard to port, NOW!"
The cabin tilted crazily as Donald obeyed the frantic command, throwing all of them to the floor. Goofy, still rooting around the in the storage lockers, had the worst of it as their entire contents came flying out to bury him against the port side wall. The sub rocked to a halt, leaving all of them breathless and desperately curious about the fate they had narrowly avoided.
The water was murky at this depth, leaving them with not much of a view out the starboard side portholes. Mickey had Donald bring up the exterior spotlights, and as a group, they gasped in dismay.
There, resting on a pedestal-like rock formation, was the Rocket Crown—a gorgeous incongruity in the undersea gloom, all gold and sapphire and pearls. And there, surrounding it in a dense cloud as vast as a pod of whales, circling it and clustering about it (but always keeping a distance of a few feet), daring the heroes to try and claim it, were…things. Hideous, hostile things.
Mickey's spirits dropped, and he could almost hear Maleficent's chuckle of triumph.
To Be Continued…
A/N: I would like to take this moment to thank my readers once again for their wonderful, encouraging reviews. I don't know what I'd do without you guys—keep posting chapters, probably, since I like to finish what I start. But I wouldn't have as much to look forward to after each one!
In case you're wondering, I miss the Submarine Voyage as much as Minnie does. I'm pleased as punch that there are only months to go before it re-opens with a brand new Finding Nemo theme and, as I understand it, some really spiffy projection technology.
