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Minnie had retreated to the control booth. It was the quietest place in the studio since the previous afternoon, when they'd discovered Oswald's virtual world had activated. She paced on the producer's level of the booth, which was about two steps higher than where the techies were meant to sit.
At this moment, Max was the only other occupant in the room. It had been a stroke of luck that he'd been able to drop by the studios at such short notice, and bring help. Pete's son PJ was in the security room next door poring through footage, and Roxanne was down on the floor below the control booth with her feet poking out from underneath the backup motherboard.
Minnie kept glancing at the monitors, hoping for some sign that Jasmine and the others had figured out what was happening. She had to will away the urge about nineteen times to ask Max if he'd learned anything new. The trio was certainly more savvy with the current electronics than she was, and Minnie wished to every star in the sky that they could fix the problem before the executives had to be told what was going on.
Max leaned into the microphone. "Talk to me Peej. Anything on the external footage?"
"Nothin' yet, buddy. I'm only at seventeen percent."
"What have you got on the internal?"
"Ah, it's weird. I've got eyes on the Headless Horseman, but he's just kind of...standing there."
"I think the Horseman isn't actually real," said Max, taking a second to get affirmation from Minnie. "He was programmed in, based on the original model."
"He's still creepy," said PJ.
"Here's what I don't get," came Roxanne's voice through her headset. "If you can program a simulated world to accurately mimic the Matterhorn's yeti, why don't you just create a virtual version of Elsa?"
"Everyone would be out of jobs," snickered Max.
Minnie hopped down to where Max was and leaned over his shoulder. "That's come up before, but the computers don't have enough memory to program every possible dialogue tree."
"It would be a lot safer," said PJ.
"But a lot less real," Max added. "Dad always told me he was most proud of the shorts where he had to play every character on screen."
Minnie smiled at Max and gave his head a gentle rub. "It used to take him 36 hours to film one minute of footage. I never heard him complain one time."
A low buzz came from the panel, and Max fumbled around with the knobs trying to locate the source. "What's that?"
"Someone's outside." Minnie twisted the microphone's dial to the alternate speakers. "Minnie here."
"It's Belle," came the voice on the other side. "I found the information on the banshee you were looking for."
"Why don't you come on up?" Minnie suggested, switching the microphone switch back to where it was.
"-st has been disturbed," Roxanne's voice crackled over the speakers.
"Sorry, Roxanne," said Max. "We had to switch frequencies."
"Oh, I was just asking if something back here had been unplugged recently?"
Max looked to Minnie, who just shrugged. "No idea. Why? What are you looking at?"
Roxanne slid out from under the area where she'd been working and dusted herself off. "It may be nothing," she said, looking straight into the security camera. "I was just thinking. What if this wasn't a malfunction?"
"What else would it be, Rox?"
"Do you guys think it's possible someone may have sabotaged Oswald's project?"
For a few seconds nobody said anything. PJ gave a bewildered look to the camera in his room that only the control booth could see. It took Belle's knock on the door to break the silence, and it startled both Minnie and Max.
"Come on, Roxanne," said PJ. "You don't think anybody at Disney would do something like that?"
The young lady was clearly not happy suggesting what she was suggesting. "There's- how many lives in danger?"
"Ten," Minnie called from the control booth's door.
"Ten," Max repeated.
"There's ten lives in danger," said Roxanne. "Do you really want to risk ruling the possibility out?"
Minnie ushered Belle up onto the higher level where the librarian opened three books and spread them out in front of the mouse. "Here she is," Belle pointed to the glowing apparition. "The banshee."
"Darby O'Gill!" Minnie exclaimed in recognition. "I'd completely forgotten about that movie."
Belle nodded. "And if Alice said she recognized what the banshee was-"
"Then that means," Minnie picked up the thought, "information about Disney films made it into the simulation."
"Probably in the form of the books Alice and Megara have been reading."
Max blinked. "So what does that mean?"
Minnie took in a deep breath. "It means Roxanne might be on to something. There's no reason that information would make it into a virtual world unless it was brought there intentionally."
"I'm afraid its worse than the sharing of metadata," said Belle. "Alice said she knew what the banshee signified. If it's cackling the way Alice described, it may mean someone is about to die."
At first everybody reacted to Belle's comment the same way, by not reacting at all. Then in unison they all started doing something different from each other. Max went on a soliloquy that the banshee's appearance was merely ambient atmosphere. Roxanne pulled up footage of Alice and Meg's conversation at a secondary terminal and tried searching for a sound wave of the phantom. Minnie just stared at the image in Belle's book as if she was trying to will it to disappear. And PJ obsessed over a detail that nobody else was thinking about.
"Did you guys say 'ten'?" he asked. Then two more times before getting confirmation.
"Yes, Peej," Max huffed into the microphone, not having meant to be irritated but it slipping out nonetheless.
"I think it's only nine," PJ insisted.
"There's ten of them in there," said Minnie in almost a hush.
PJ started counting on his fingers. "Frollo, Bagheera, Tarzan, Kronk, Elsa, Jasmine, Meg, Alice, Maleficent. That's nine. Who's the tenth?"
Minnie gave a look of confusion to PJ's face on the monitor, then one to Belle.
"I thought it was supposed to Madam Mim," said the librarian.
"That's right," said Minnie. "It was down to her and Dr. Facilier because we wanted another magic villain. It was getting too heavy on the modern era, so we went with Mim."
"Have any of you guys seen Mim in there?" said Roxanne. Belle shook her head while PJ scrolled through the virtual map.
"She could be disguised as an animal," offered Max.
Minnie had an inspiration. "What about that thing that came through the forest, that Frollo keeps calling a demon? Didn't it speak to them?"
"Peej," said Max. "Try to find the footage right before Elsa got wounded."
Roxanne chimed in before PJ could respond. "I've got it pulled up right now."
Max rerouted the sequence to the main screen in the control booth. There was only about ten seconds of footage showing the shape of it, and it the details were blurry. Max started adjusting the color palette to try to clean it up.
Belle and Minnie stared intensely at the frozen image while the backgrounds faded in and out. "That doesn't look like Madam Mim," said Belle. "That looks more like Maleficent."
"Not quite," Minnie responded, tilting her head at an angle. "It looks more like a-"
Her jaw dropped when she recognized the silhouette. Neither Belle nor Max realized what they were looking at until a layer of details found resolution.
Max blinked in disbelief. He turned over his shoulder to get conformation of what he was seeing from the upper level. "Is that-" was all he could say before comprehending that they were more stunned than he was. Belle asked how it was even possible, although her question wasn't directed to anyone but her own perplexity. Minnie's gloved hand had already brought the receiver of the emergency phone to her ear.
"Jiminy?" she said into the mouthpiece. "Put me through to the board. There's a predicament."
Daffy Duck had had worse days, but they tended to make more sense than the one he was having now. "Leon, you're killing me." He tossed the paper clipped pages back onto his bosses desk. "These are your fingers, around my throat, squeezing the last visages of an icon into yesteryears gone by! My life is flashing before my eyes and Space Jam is no longer the low point!"
Leon remained undeterred. "I thought you'd be happier than this. You've spent decades trying to one-up Warner Brother's biggest star."
"And what has that ever gotten me?"
"Relevance?" Leon shrugged.
"And exactly how receptive to Tex Avery's stamp of 'Your Anvil Here' do you think the Wonderful World of Saccharine is gonna be?"
Leon pitched a long one. "They've got all the princesses."
Daffy sank down into the chair across from his boss's desk and let his feathered head hit the wooden surface so hard it made the pen holder bounce. "So the rabbit's gone AWOL. What do I care which studio caters to him?"
"Daffy, did you actually read the file?"
"I skimmed it. Something about some Mouse House production that he's crashed?"
"It's a virtual world, Daffy. Cutting edge technology. And Disney's legal department is under the impression that our Mr. Bunny has deliberately sabotaged whatever they're working on."
"You're kidding me, right?"
"Is it that far fetched?"
"Look," Daffy pushed himself back into a sitting position. "I'm all for the rabbit getting in a tussle with the cool kids, but he's got nothin' against Disney."
"I tried telling them that, but they think it's an ego thing."
"What ego thing?" Daffy snapped, more offended than surprised. "It's not like he's ME! He's on top of the world already! He doesn't need to put anyone down to feel better about himself."
Leon folded his hands. "They've looked at his character history and found multiple cases of disproportionate retribution-"
"When provoked," Daffy interrupted. "Jeez, doesn't anyone watch the old shorts anymore?"
"They suggest he may have gone crazy."
"Based on what? One tortoise race and some World War II gremlins?" Daffy snatched up the file and began speed reading it. "Studio executives sure don't sugar coat it, do they?" He flipped through all five pages in a few seconds and threw the packet back down. "Okay, going mad with success I can buy, but there's no way the rabbit's gone stupid. You really think he'd trap himself in a virtual world to prove whatever it is those people think he's trying to prove?"
"Be that as it may, their studio is drawing their own conclusions, and the last thing I need is to be two steps behind."
"So what's this got to do with me then? You're sending me over there to...I'm guessing, complain to guest relations?"
"No, I want you to figure out what's going on?"
"And apart from my legally binding contract that requires compliance, why would I do that?"
"Because unless they can prove that Mr. Bunny maliciously caused the crisis at hand, it's just as possible that he's as much a victim as the others who are trapped there. Which means we have grounds to send in our own representatives."
"Virtual world, eh?" Daffy snorted. "Disney always gets the fun stuff."
"So can I notate that you agreed to go without being threatened?"
"Two words, Leon. Why? Me?"
"Because if Bugs isn't holding a grudge against Disney, then someone may be holding a grudge against him. Someone who has a certain amount of access to the Disney lot, and who's crazy enough to come up with a plan that succeeds in trapping a bigger star in a virtual world. And I want said someone to be visibly bringing the crisis to a resolution before the rival company makes that connection."
"Yeah, I see your point. That does sound like me." Daffy rubbed his eyes. "Except for the part where it succeeds. All right, is there a plan or am I going Gilliam?"
"You're my best duck, Daffy. I'm not sending you alone." Leon buzzed the receptionist, instructing her to 'send them in'. A few seconds later the door to his office opened and a familiar pig, cat, and coyote proudly filed inside.
Daffy stared, waiting for a punch line that never came. He glared at his boss. "These clods?"
"You'd be surprised at what a little star power can accomplish."
"You really know how to pick the A-team, Leon," Daffy snarled, unaware of Speedy Gonzales's presence on the floor below. "We have a collective winning streak of, what? Zero?"
Leon smiled. "Weaknesses are just strengths that haven't blossomed."
"Oh, no-" Daffy pushed himself out of the chair and scurried out the door. "Don't start with that humanitarian sap!" he shouted from the hallway.
Leon chuckled before addressing the remaining assembly. "I'm counting on you guys. Try to bring him back alive."
Continue to Chapter Thirteen.
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