It had been a long trip down to Disney, and I'm sure you don't want to hear about it. So, in the interest of keeping your interest, I'm skipping over that part. Instead, let's skip to a group of humans, norns and a robot at a park bench in front of the Cinderella Castle that's so famous in this series. It was the middle of the day, which is a bad time to be at Disney, or Florida for that matter. Florida in midday is hot enough to bake the birds flying through. (In fact, I'm sure many a tourist has been maimed by a baked bird falling out of the sky.)

"We were supposed to meet Jack here, right?" Susan asked as she fanned herself.

"That's what he said, I guess," Eric answered back. "Wasn't Jack that little purple thing I hit with my bike?"

"No, no, no," corrected Susan, "that was the OTHER Jack. There's two. The one we're meeting works for Cyberlife and is very much not purple."

Lydia, who was under the shade of the bench, stuck her head out for a moment. "Do you remember this place, Dad?"

Karr shrugged. "I was kinda little when I was here, I only remember a little bit."

"How little?"

"Uh ... " Karr turned to Jenna. "How old was I, mom?"

"Hold on, hold on," she insisted. "We're in Disney, right?"

There was a badly placed pause.

"I don't think she remembers, either," Karr whispered to Lydia.

"Oh. Well, what do you remember?"

"Gee, let me think ... I remember the exhibits we did, and that water park ... oh, and the rescue mission at Cinderella Castle, I remember most of that," he answered.

"Rescue mission?" Karr had now caught the attention of Ben and Boggles, who poked out from under the bench.

"Yeah, we had to get a toy norn from this band of thieves, the Wolfpack. They had tied the toy to a fire rocket.."

"Fire rocket?"

"It's like a bottle rocket, only it's a whole lot bigger. Anyway, we got the toy back, but the rocket was gonna hit Tinkerbell, so we stopped it."

"How'd you stop it?" asked Ben.

"Blip flew in the way of the fire rocket and it jammed and exploded in him," Karr replied.

"Oh, wow!" Boggles cheered. The trio of little creatures completely scurried out from under their bench to Blip, who was hovering by Katherine. "Did you do that?"

Both Blip and Katherine didn't see Lydia, Ben and Boggles at first. They were both staring at the castle. To most little kids, the castle was a big, enchanting place where princesses and princes lived, and where fairies danced and did fairy stuff. It's generally a place of happiness for them. Something about the castle haunted the pair, though. That castle brought back bad memories, memories of the night they lost each other. They didn't like that place.

"Blip?" Boggles kind of nudged Blip a couple of times.

"Huh? Oh! Geez, sorry. What'cha need?"

"Did you really stop that fire rocket from killing Tinkerbell?"

"Oh ... well, yeah.. " Blip modestly replied. "It kinda rendered me useless for a couple of hours, and I still have marks on my bottom ... "

"You what?" Katherine turned around now, facing Blip instead of the castle. "I thought I got all those when I fixed you.."

"No, really. I think there's still a couple."

"What? Let me see that." Katherine flipped Blip upside down (a position he did not particularly enjoy, but he really wasn't allowed to complain due to the fact that upside down, he couldn't quite control himself and could very quickly wind up on the ground) and looked. "Gee, I guess there is." She poked him a bit. "Does that hurt?"

"Katherine, I'm a robot.."

"Oh, right. I guess it doesn't, then."

As Katherine examined Blip's underside, everyone's favorite Cyberlife employee showed up. What? Toby? No, work with me here. Jack.

"'Ello! Nice to see you, again," he greeted. "Katherine, Susan, Blip, - feeling better, I see - and ... hullo? Who're these new folks?"

"I'm Eric," replied you-know-who. "And down there is Karr and Jenna, who I assume you met, and," he said this next part slowly, so as to make sure he got the names right, "Lydia, Ben, Boggles and Kass."

"Karr?" started Jack. "I remember Karr! My gosh, when I last saw you," he bent down to Karr's level, "you were ... uh ... really little. I honestly didn't think norns would last a year on Earth. And Jenna - ! My, you've .. changed."

Jack and Jenna stared at each other for a moment. Truth be told, they'd both changed. However, I doubt that a new haircut and a different shirt quite stacks up to sagging skin, a newer, sleepy-eyed look, white streaks across the ears, a stick for support and a touch of weight gain.

"Jack? I might remember you ... " Jenna blinked slowly. "Yeah, you're that guy from Cyberlife."

"You're having trouble remembering me, or this place?"

"Please, I'm having trouble remember how to eat. That's something for you programming geniuses to work on for C3, by the way. Giving the pensioners a better memory."

"But older organisms commonly --"

"Oh, skip science. What about *us*?"

This was rather thought provoking for Jack. He'd never gotten suggestions from a norn before. Boy, what if they could use the HoloDeck to get feedback from real norns about their games? Why stop there? The norns could even help design the games, he thought. Then he remembered that these creatures also commonly fall into the ocean and drown. Maybe that wasn't the best idea.

Katherine interrupted his train of thought. "I'm going to go get a drink of water, be right back."

-----

It was later, in the hotel room. Jenna was working on the computer, playing C1 just for the heck of it. Sheer curiosity moved her to check out the Graveyard Applet. She clicked the little headstone and waited for it to load. Digging through, she found several (jillion) dead experiments. Blah, blah, blah, so on ... however, one caught her eye. It seemed to be a little dead baby norn. The baby held a shocking resemblance to herself, being a total Banana norn. Didn't Katherine once tell her that she was the only Banana norn ever in Albia?

"Katherine?" Jenna called. "Out of curiosity, didn't you tell me I was the only banana norn you ever had?"

"Just a minute," Katherine shouted back. There was a rumble, and the hotel bathroom opened quickly, exposing several soap bubbles and a sheepish Katherine (and get your mind out of the gutter -- she was clothed, thank you). "Yeah, you're my only one, why?" Jenna pointed to the screen. "Oh. Yeah, that ... I guess that's you, too."

"I'm dead?"

"Sort of. That was the first you. After you died, me an' Blip ..." Katherine figured there was no way Jenna was going to understand the whole story of how she dug out Jenna's moniker and repaired her genes, then cloned her back to life. So, she did quite a bit of truncating. " ... fixed you so that you could live, then put you back in Albia."

"I'm supposed to be dead?"

"Er ... no, you're alive."

"That wasn't my question." Jenna was rather peeved now. "I was born dead. That's kind of a major clue that I was supposed to be LEFT dead. Why do you INSIST on playing God?"

"We thought we were helping!"

"Well," Jenna started sarcastically, "thank you very much."

A horrible squeal came forth from the bathroom, as more bubbles spewed forth.

"Oh, crap. We're having this out later," Katherine insisted as she ran to the bathroom.

-----

Moon light flowed over Cinderella Castle. The stars stood in the black sky, making the eerie scene of a year ago look almost pleasant.

A lone figure walked up the stairs to the castle. He was dressed in several raggedy looking clothes, with a baseball cap on. You couldn't easily see his face or hair at all. Just as the figure reached the stairs he tripped, but picked himself up and walked on.

Once inside the castle, he looked around for something. What? It was like he was looking for a secret entrance, which he was. Finally, he ducked into a corner of the castle which no tourist dare enter and found just what he was looking for. He slid in.

Inside, there were several men all about doing this that and the other. Our figure walked up to one with gray hair.

"Jasper?" he asked, in a low and quiet tone.

"What? Who in heck are you?" The gray haired man, Jasper, answered back.

Our figure thought for a moment. "Ka - er, Kal, sir."

"And what are you doing here?!"

"I wanted to help, sir. I heard about what you did last year."

"Hnn ... be one of us?" Jasper pondered this. "OK, I suppose we do need an extra boy. You'll have to be trained, though."

"Trained?"

"Sure." Jasper lead Kal over to a poster on a wall, with three pictures. "See these kids? And that thing?"

Kal squinted a moment. The pictures were very poorly hand drawn. "Sir, those are just some stick figures and a grape fruit."

"No! See, they're the kids -- and robot -- who ruined our plans last year. They're b