The Return: Disney Lands by Ridley Pearson Read Free Book Online

fast?”
    “What? The hands?”
    “The hands were moving slow or fast?” Philby asked.
    “I dreamed it, Philby. Obviously! It supports my losing consciousness. They moved fast. I’m tellingyou, I blacked out. I think an Overtaker drew that pen on my arm.”
    “What Overtaker? They’re gone, Finn.”
    “Look, I know what you guys think of me, Philby. It doesn’t take a genius to know when you’re being mocked and teased. If you guys weren’t such good friends, it
wouldn’t hurt so much, but you are. Good friends, I mean. But I saw what I saw. I have a pen drawn on my arm. Somethinghappened when I was on that horse. I have no idea what. But it
happened, and if you had an ounce of kindness in you, you’d cross me back over and let me try it again. Knowing you, though, that won’t happen, so you’re stuck with crazy Finn and
his crazy drawing on his arm.”
    “Are you quite done?” When Philby’s temper showed, his years in England changed his accent and his phrasing.
    “I guess. Yeah.”
    “The hands of your watch went backward.
Quickly.
You’re sure of that?”
    “Yes.”
    “You felt dizzy.”
    “I said so. Yes.”
    “You remember nothing until you found yourself back on Jingles, but now you have a drawing on your arm?” Philby paused for a long moment. “Finn, have you ever read Jules
Verne?”
    “Never.”
    “Do you know that Walt Disney loved his work?
TwentyThousand Leagues Under the Sea
, for one.”
    “I think I could have guessed as much.”
    “He most likely appreciated H. G. Wells, too.”
    “Where are you going with this, Philby?”
    “It’s not a question of where I’m going, Finn. It’s a question of where you’ve been.” Philby paused the way he did when his tongue couldn’t catch up
with his thoughts. Slowly, as if afraid to speak, he quotedthe words Wayne Kresky had spoken before he’d been killed.
    “‘It’s about time.’”



“P HILBY CALLED ,” A MANDA told Jessacross a lunch
table bearing two orange trays from the Team Disney commissary. As they spoke, Jess squeezed a piece of packaged California roll between disposable chopsticks; Amanda wolfed down penne pasta with
rotisserie chicken and Parmesan.
    “And?” Jess asked, knowing by Amanda’s tone that it was something important to the Keepers—and nothing personal. If it were personal, Finn wouldhave been the one to call
Amanda.
    “He needs our help. It’s for Finn, he said. Research.”
    “Spying?”
    “I don’t know exactly.” Amanda shook her head, brow furrowed in confusion. “He wants me—us?—to dig into the early work of the Imagineers’ involvement
with television. He says it’s not stuff the Archives would have. But he thinks we’ll find it here. White papers, they’re called.”

    Here
was the Disney School of Imagineering, which operated out of the Team Disney building, located just behind a towering wall separating a backstage area from Disneyland’s
Toontown. Few of the Team Disney Cast Members knew of the school’s existence. It had its own entrance, and the college-age students coming and going were easily mistaken for Cast Members.
Those familiar with the schoolcalled it “DSI.”
    Enrollment at DSI hovered around one hundred and fifty. DSI students ate lunch in two shifts in their own commissary.
    Amanda Lockhart and Jess Lockhart, two of the newly enrolled students, were sometimes thought to be sisters despite their differing looks. Amanda, olive-skinned and vaguely Asian around the
eyes, stood five-foot-eight and was full figured. Jess’s complexionwas pale. Her white hair (not blond), made her witch-like and odd. She could have used a few inches and a few pounds. Both
pretty in their own right, the two girls carried an air of mystery and beguiling self-confidence. They’d learned the art of survival at an early age. Jessica, who had no clear birth identity,
had adopted Amanda’s last name after the two escaped a secure research facilitythat pretended to be