Please be a lawyer, she thought—possibly the only time that thought had ever formed while on the grounds of an amusement park.
“We’re always happy to have you, boss,” said Adam, putting down his wrench and stepping forward. He was smiling, but his eyes were sharp as he asked, “Who’s your friend? We aren’t prepared for a tour right now—there might be some proprietary technology on display in the private work areas.”
“There always is, because most of my park is proprietary,” said Mr. Franklin, a chiding note creeping into his voice. He didn’t do any of the heavy lifting for the Park—just provided the money and the increasingly difficult design challenges that delighted him and frustrated his engineers. “Remember that, when you’re deciding what to leave out in the open.”
“Of course, Mr. Franklin,” said Adam apologetically.
He must have sounded conciliatory enough, because Mr. Franklin smiled and said, “No harm done. This is Mr. Tillman.” He indicated the man with the clipboard. “Mr. Tillman is an efficiency expert. He’s going to be with you for the next several days, making notes on what we can do to improve the overall experience of our guests. Remember, a working park is a happy park, and a happy park can’t help but be filled with happy people.”
It was a testament to Mr. Franklin’s general air of obliviousness that he didn’t notice the way the mood in the room darkened the moment he said the words “efficiency expert.”
On Clover’s workbench, the pixie caught fire again.
*
She supposed it was inevitable: If someone was going to be assigned to babysit the efficiency expert, why not pick on the girl with the fire consuming her workbench? She’d been a soft target, too busy beating out the flames to defend herself. By the time she’d realized what was happening, it had been too late for any of the easy excuses, and the hard ones could have resulted in Mr. Franklin realizing how nervous they all were. Not an acceptable outcome.
“This is what we call the Enchanted Garden,” said Clover, gesturing at the moss-draped trees with their glittering bark and veils of brilliantly colored butterflies. “Note that the butterflies are currently stationary. Mr. Franklin wants us to have them flying independently by the middle of next quarter. We’re working on miniaturizing the necessary servos, and we hope to be done by Christmas.” Because we’re so damned efficient, she thought fiercely. You’re not needed. Go home.
Once the servos for the butterflies were officially ready, they could “upgrade” the pixies. Mr. Franklin would be shocked by how much more freely they flew, and how much more rarely they caught fire. Most living things were substantially less subject to spontaneous combustion than their robot counterparts.
“How many people pass through the, ah, Enchanted Garden daily?”
“On a busy day, anywhere from ten to thirty thousand. We have a flow-through on the Park as a whole of between fifty and one hundred thousand people, more at the major holidays. Capacity for ticketed guests is two hundred thousand, which assumes one child below the age of ticketing for every four adult or older child guests. We’ve had to close admissions for fire safety reasons five times in the past year, due to overcrowding.”
Mr. Tillman made a note on his clipboard. Clover decided to hate the clipboard. “So what I’m hearing is that under one-third of guests will pass through the Enchanted Garden on an average day. What do you estimate the cost expenditure for these, ah, ‘independently motile’ butterflies to be?”
Clover forced herself to keep smiling. If she started scowling, she wasn’t going to be able to stop. “After we finish initial research and development, ten dollars per butterfly, plus maintenance costs.” Minus forty dollars per pixie in maintenance costs, since the pixies wouldn’t need it anymore.
“And do you genuinely feel that this will improve the experience of the average park guest so measurably that it should remain a priority?”
“Mr. Franklin wants it.”
Normally, that answer could shut down or derail any criticism: Mr. Franklin wanted it. Mr. Franklin was beloved by children and adults alike, thanks to his innovative movies, his lines of affordable and amusing toys, his breakfast cereals, for fuck’s sake, and, most of all, his Dreamland. His glorious park that elevated the mundane into the magical, allowing people with the cash and the vacation time to spare to escape their everyday lives for something extraordinary. Mr. Franklin was a jerk and a bigot who didn’t understand that he couldn’t always get his own way, but no one questioned what he’d built, and no one really wanted to argue with him.
Mr. Tillman was apparently no one. He made another note on his clipboard. “I see. What are these flowers?”
Crap. Clover hurried to put herself between the efficiency expert and the trumpet flowers he was gesturing at. “Specially treated plastic. They look real, they never wilt, and they put off a soothing aroma that keeps children calmer. It’s reduced shoving incidents in the Mermaid Grotto and Unicorn Meadows by seventy percent.” Which was important. Unicorns were essentially sharp, vindictive horses that didn’t care whether the person pulling their tails was a paying guest or not. Preventing goring incidents was key.
“What about guests with allergies?” asked Mr. Tillman, suddenly scowling. “Have you considered that these flowers might be leading to health issues?”
“Uh . . .” Clover froze, finally squeaking, “No?” Because they weren’t plastic, and no one human had ever been allergic to a Dryad-cultivated flower. But there was no way to say that.
“This is environmentally very unsound. I’ll be discussing this with Mr. Franklin. Now, take me to”—he glanced at his notes—“the Mermaid Grotto.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” said Clover, suddenly all smiles again. No one could look at the Mermaid Grotto and fail to understand the enchantment and wonder that permeated this place. It just wasn’t possible. “Follow me.”
*
Mr. Tillman specialized in the impossible. He stood impassively in the underwater viewing area, making notes on his clipboard while Technicolor fish swam by on the other side of the glass, playing peekaboo through the forest of rainbow kelp. Wingless pixies with sea-horse tails rode on the backs of majestically gliding tuna. Clover shifted her weight from foot to foot, hoping Mr. Tillman wouldn’t ask her any finicky questions about how the submerged pixies were mechanically possible. The answer was simple: they weren’t. She just had no way to explain that.
He didn’t ask. Instead, he looked up, frowned, and asked, “Why is this place called ‘Mermaid Grotto’ if there are no mermaids?”
“Oh, there are mermaids,” she said, so relieved by the question that she forgot to be cautious about her answer. “This time of day, they’re usually up top, watching the sunset.”