That Debra’s people had had me killed, and screw their alibis1, That theywould kill me again, when the time came for them to make a play for theHaunted Mansion2, That our only hope for saving the Mansion was apreemptive strike against them: we had to hit them hard, where it hurt.
Dan and I had been treated to eight hours of insectile precision in theHall of Presidents, Debra’s people working with effortless cooperationborn of the adversity they’d faced in Beijing. Debra moved from team toteam, making suggestions with body language as much as with words,leaving bursts of inspired activity in her wake.
It was that precision that convinced me of point one. Any ad-hoc thistight could pull off anything if it advanced their agenda. Ad-hoc? Hell,call them what they were: an army.
Point two came to me when I sampled the Lincoln build that Tim finishedat about three in the morning, after intensive consultation3 withDebra. The mark of a great ride is that it gets better the second timearound, as the detail and flourishes start to impinge on your consciousness.
The Mansion was full of little gimcracks and sly nods that snuck intoyour experience on each successive ride.
Tim shuffled4 his feet nervously5, bursting with barely restrained prideas I switched on public access. He dumped the app to my public directory,and, gingerly, I executed it.
God! God and Lincoln and cannon-fire and oratory6 and ploughs andmules and greatcoats! It rolled over me, it punched through me, itcrashed against the inside of my skull7 and rebounded8. The first passthrough, there had been a sense of order, of narrative10, but this, this wasgestalt, the whole thing in one undifferentiated ball, filling me and spillingover. It was panicky for a moment, as the essence of Lincolnessseemed to threaten my own personality, and, just as it was about to44overwhelm me, it receded11, leaving behind a rush of endorphin and adrenalinethat made me want to jump.
“Tim,” I gasped12. “Tim! That was …” Words failed me. I wanted to hughim. What we could do for the Mansion with this! What elegance13! Directlyimprinting the experience, without recourse to the stupid, blindeyes; the thick, deaf ears.
Tim beamed and basked14, and Debra nodded solemnly from herthrone. “You liked it?” Tim said. I nodded, and staggered back to thetheatre seat where Dan slept, head thrown back, snores softly rattling15 inhis throat.
Incrementally16, reason trickled17 back into my mind, and with it came ire.
How dare they? The wonderful compromises of technology and expensethat had given us the Disney rides—rides that had entertained the worldfor two centuries and more—could never compete head to head withwhat they were working on.
My hands knotted into fists in my lap. Why the fuck couldn’t they dothis somewhere else? Why did they have to destroy everything I loved torealize this? They could build this tech anywhere—they could distributeit online and people could access it from their living rooms!
But that would never do. Doing it here was better for the old Whuffie—they’d make over Disney World and hold it, a single ad-hoc wherethree hundred had flourished before, smoothly18 operating a park twicethe size of Manhattan.
I stood and stalked out of the theater, out into Liberty Square and thePark. It had cooled down without drying out, and there was a damp chillthat crawled up my back and made my breath stick in my throat. Iturned to contemplate19 the Hall of Presidents, staid and solid as it hadbeen since my boyhood and before, a monument to the Imagineers whoanticipated the Bitchun Society, inspired it.
I called Dan, still snoring back in the theater, and woke him. Hegrunted unintelligibly21 in my cochlea.
“They did it—they killed me.” I knew they had, and I was glad. Itmade what I had to do next easier.
“Oh, Jesus. They didn’t kill you—they offered their backups, remember?
They couldn’t have done it.”
“Bullshit!” I shouted into the empty night. “Bullshit! They did it, andthey fucked with their backups somehow. They must have. It’s all tooneat and tidy. How else could they have gotten so far with the Hall so45fast? They knew it was coming, they planned a disruption, and theymoved in. Tell me that you think they just had these plans lying aroundand moved on them when they could.”
Dan groaned22, and I heard his joints23 popping. He must have beenstretching. The Park breathed around me, the sounds of maintenancecrews scurrying24 in the night. “I do believe that. Clearly, you don’t. It’snot the first time we’ve disagreed. So now what?”
“Now we save the Mansion,” I said. “Now we fight back.”
“Oh, shit,” Dan said.
I have to admit, there was a part of me that concurred25.
My opportunity came later that week. Debra’s ad-hocs were showboating,announcing a special preview of the new Hall to the other adhocsthat worked in the Park. It was classic chutzpah, letting the key influencersin the Park in long before the bugs26 were hammered out. Asmooth run would garner27 the kind of impressed reaction that guaranteedcontinued support while they finished up; a failed demo coulddoom them. There were plenty of people in the Park who had a sentimentalattachment to the Hall of Presidents, and whatever Debra’speople came up with would have to answer their longing28.
“I’m going to do it during the demo,” I told Dan, while I piloted therunabout from home to the castmember parking. I snuck a look at him togauge his reaction. He had his poker29 face on.
“I’m not going to tell Lil,” I continued. “It’s better that she doesn’tknow—plausible30 deniability.”
“And me?” he said. “Don’t I need plausible deniability?”
“No,” I said. “No, you don’t. You’re an outsider. You can make thecase that you were working on your own—gone rogue31.” I knew it wasn’tfair. Dan was here to build up his Whuffie, and if he was implicated32 inmy dirty scheme, he’d have to start over again. I knew it wasn’t fair, butI didn’t care. I knew that we were fighting for our own survival. “It’sgood versus33 evil, Dan. You don’t want to be a post-person. You want tostay human. The rides are human. We each mediate34 them through ourown experience. We’re physically35 inside of them, and they talk to usthrough our senses. What Debra’s people are building—it’s hive-mindshit. Directly implanting thoughts! Jesus! It’s not an experience, it’sbrainwashing! You gotta know that.” I was pleading, arguing with myselfas much as with him.
46I snuck another look at him as I sped along the Disney back-roads,lined with sweaty Florida pines and immaculate purple signage. Danwas looking thoughtful, the way he had back in our old days in Toronto.
Some of my tension dissipated. He was thinking about it—I’d gottenthrough to him.
“Jules, this isn’t one of your better ideas.” My chest tightened36, and hepatted my shoulder. He had the knack37 of putting me at my ease, evenwhen he was telling me that I was an idiot. “Even if Debra was behindyour assassination38—and that’s not a certainty, we both know that. Evenif that’s the case, we’ve got better means at our disposal. Improving theMansion, competing with her head to head, that’s smart. Give it a littlewhile and we can come back at her, take over the Hall—even the Pirates,that’d really piss her off. Hell, if we can prove she was behind the assassination,we can chase her off right now. Sabotage39 is not going to do youany good. You’ve got lots of other options.”
“But none of them are fast enough, and none of them are emotionallysatisfying. This way has some goddamn balls.”
We reached castmember parking, I swung the runabout into a slot andstalked out before it had a chance to extrude40 its recharger cock. I heardDan’s door slam behind me and knew that he was following behind.
We took to the utilidors grimly. I walked past the cameras, knowingthat my image was being archived, my presence logged. I’d picked thetiming of my raid carefully: by arriving at high noon, I was sticking tomy traditional pattern for watching hot-weather crowd dynamics41. I’dmade a point of visiting twice during the previous week at this time, andof dawdling42 in the commissary before heading topside. The delaybetween my arrival in the runabout and my showing up at the Mansionwould not be discrepant43.
Dan dogged my heels as I swung towards the commissary, and thenhugged the wall, in the camera’s blindspot. Back in my early days in thePark, when I was courting Lil, she showed me the A-Vac, the oldpneumatic waste-disposal system, decommissioned in the 20s. The kidswho grew up in the Park had been notorious explorers of the tubes,which still whiffed faintly of the garbage bags they’d once whisked at 60mph to the dump on the property’s outskirts44, but for a brave, limber kid,the tubes were a subterranean45 wonderland to explore when the hypermediatedexperiences of the Park lost their luster46.
47I snarled47 a grin and popped open the service entrance. “If they hadn’tkilled me and forced me to switch to a new body, I probably wouldn’t beflexible enough to fit in,” I hissed48 at Dan. “Ironic, huh?”
I clambered inside without waiting for a reply, and started inching myway under the Hall of Presidents.
My plan had covered every conceivable detail, except one, whichdidn’t occur to me until I was forty minutes into the pneumatic tube,arms held before me and legs angled back like a swimmer’s.
How was I going to reach into my pockets?
Specifically, how was I going to retrieve49 my HERF gun from my backpants-pocket, when I couldn’t even bend my elbows? The HERF gun wasthe crux50 of the plan: a High Energy Radio Frequency generator51 with adirectional, focused beam that would punch up through the floor of theHall of Presidents and fuse every goddamn scrap52 of unshielded electronicson the premises53. I’d gotten the germ of the idea during Tim’s firstdemo, when I’d seen all of his prototypes spread out backstage, cases off,ready to be tinkered with. Unshielded.
“Dan,” I said, my voice oddly muffled54 by the tube’s walls.
“Yeah?” he said. He’d been silent during the journey, the sound of hispainful, elbow-dragging progress through the lightless tube my only indicatorof his presence.
“Can you reach my back pocket?”
“Oh, shit,” he said.
“Goddamn it,” I said, “keep the fucking editorial to yourself. Can youreach it or not?”
I heard him grunt20 as he pulled himself up in the tube, then felt hishand groping up my calf55. Soon, his chest was crushing my calves56 intothe tube’s floor and his hand was pawing around my ass9.
“I can reach it,” he said. I could tell from his tone that he wasn’t toohappy about my snapping at him, but I was too wrapped up to consideran apology, despite what must be happening to my Whuffie as Dan didhis slow burn.
He fumbled57 the gun—a narrow cylinder58 as long as my palm—out ofmy pocket. “Now what?” he said.
“Can you pass it up?” I asked.
48Dan crawled higher, overtop of me, but stuck fast when his ribcagemet my glutes. “I can’t get any further,” he said.
“Fine,” I said. “You’ll have to fire it, then.” I held my breath. Would hedo it? It was one thing to be my accomplice59, another to be the author ofthe destruction.
“Aw, Jules,” he said.
“A simple yes or no, Dan. That’s all I want to hear from you.” I wasboiling with anger—at myself, at Dan, at Debra, at the whole goddamnthing.
“Fine,” he said.
“Good. Dial it up to max dispersion and point it straight up.”
I heard him release the catch, felt a staticky crackle in the air, and thenit was done. The gun was a one-shot, something I’d confiscated60 from amischievous guest a decade before, when they’d had a brief vogue61.
“Hang on to it,” I said. I had no intention of leaving such a damningbit of evidence behind. I resumed my bellycrawl forward to the next servicehatch, near the parking lot, where I’d stashed62 an identical change ofclothes for both of us.
We made it back just as the demo was getting underway. Debra’s adhocswere ranged around the mezzanine inside the Hall of Presidents, acollection of influential63 castmembers from other ad-hocs filling the preshowarea to capacity.
Dan and I filed in just as Tim was stringing the velvet64 rope up behindthe crowd. He gave me a genuine smile and shook my hand, and Ismiled back, full of good feelings now that I knew that he was goingdown in flames. I found Lil and slipped my hand into hers as we filed intothe auditorium65, which had the new-car smell of rug shampoo andfresh electronics.
We took our seats and I bounced my leg nervously, compulsively,while Debra, dressed in Lincoln’s coat and stovepipe, delivered a shortspeech. There was some kind of broadcast rig mounted over the stagenow, something to allow them to beam us all their app in one humongousburst.
Debra finished up and stepped off the stage to a polite round of applause,and they started the demo.
49Nothing happened. I tried to keep the shit-eating grin off my face asnothing happened. No tone in my cochlea indicating a new file in mypublic directory, no rush of sensation, nothing. I turned to Lil to makesome snotty remark, but her eyes were closed, her mouth lolling open,her breath coming in short huffs. Down the row, every castmember wasin the same attitude of deep, mind-blown concentration. I pulled up adiagnostic HUD.
Nothing. No diagnostics. No HUD. I cold-rebooted.
Nothing.
I was offline.
Offline, I filed out of the Hall of Presidents. Offline, I took Lil’s handand walked to the Liberty Belle66 load-zone, our spot for private conversations.
Offline, I bummed67 a cigarette from her.
Lil was upset—even through my bemused, offline haze68, I could tellthat. Tears pricked69 her eyes.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said, after a hard moment’s staring intothe moonlight reflecting off the river.
“Tell you?” I said, dumbly.
“They’re really good. They’re better than good. They’re better than us.
Oh, God.”
Offline, I couldn’t find stats or signals to help me discuss the matter.
Offline, I tried it without help. “I don’t think so. I don’t think they’ve gotsoul, I don’t think they’ve got history, I don’t think they’ve got any kindof connection to the past. The world grew up in the Disneys—they visitthis place for continuity as much as for entertainment. We provide that.”
I’m offline, and they’re not—what the hell happened?
“It’ll be okay, Lil. There’s nothing in that place that’s better than us.
Different and new, but not better. You know that—you’ve spent moretime in the Mansion than anyone, you know how much refinement70, howmuch work there is in there. How can something they whipped up in acouple weeks possibly be better that this thing we’ve been maintainingfor all these years?”
She ground the back of her sleeve against her eyes and smiled.
“Sorry,” she said. Her nose was red, her eyes puffy, her freckles71 lividover the flush of her cheeks. “Sorry—it’s just shocking. Maybe you’reright. And even if you’re not—hey, that’s the whole point of a50meritocracy, right? The best stuff survives, everything else getssupplanted.
“Oh, shit, I hate how I look when I cry,” she said. “Let’s go congratulatethem.”
As I took her hand, I was obscurely pleased with myself for having improvedher mood without artificial assistance.
Dan was nowhere to be seen as Lil and I mounted the stage at the Hall,where Debra’s ad-hocs and a knot of well-wishers were celebrating bypassing a rock around. Debra had lost the tailcoat and hat, and was in anextreme state of relaxation72, arms around the shoulders of two of hercronies, pipe between her teeth.
She grinned around the pipe as Lil and I stumbled through some insincerecompliments, nodded, and toked heavily while Tim applied73 atorch to the bowl.
“Thanks,” she said, laconically74. “It was a team effort.” She hugged hercronies to her, almost knocking their heads together.
Lil said, “What’s your timeline, then?”
Debra started unreeling a long spiel about critical paths, milestones,requirements meetings, and I tuned75 her out. Ad-hocs were crazy for thatprocess stuff. I stared at my feet, at the floorboards, and realized thatthey weren’t floorboards at all, but faux-finish painted over a coppermesh—a Faraday cage. That’s why the HERF gun hadn’t done anything;that’s why they’d been so casual about working with the shielding offtheir computers. With my eye, I followed the copper76 shielding aroundthe entire stage and up the walls, where it disappeared into the ceiling.
Once again, I was struck by the evolvedness of Debra’s ad-hocs, howtheir trial by fire in China had armored them against the kind of bushleaguejiggery-pokery that the fuzzy bunnies in Florida—myself included—came up with.
For instance, I didn’t think there was a single castmember in the Parkoutside of Deb’s clique77 with the stones to stage an assassination. Once I’dmade that leap, I realized that it was only a matter of time until theystaged another one—and another, and another. Whatever they could getaway with.
Debra’s spiel finally wound down and Lil and I headed away. Istopped in front of the backup terminal in the gateway78 between Liberty51Square and Fantasyland. “When was the last time you backed up?” Iasked her. If they could go after me, they might go after any of us.
“Yesterday,” she said. She exuded79 bone-weariness at me, looking morelike an overmediated guest than a tireless castmember.
“Let’s run another backup, huh? We should really back up at nightand at lunchtime—with things the way they are, we can’t afford to losean afternoon’s work, much less a week’s.”
Lil rolled her eyes. I knew better than to argue with her when she wastired, but this was too crucial to set aside for petulance80. “You can backup that often if you want to, Julius, but don’t tell me how to live my life,okay?”
“Come on, Lil—it only takes a minute, and it’d make me feel a lot better.
Please?” I hated the whine81 in my voice.
“No, Julius. No. Let’s go home and get some sleep. I want to do somework on new merch for the Mansion—some collectible stuff, maybe.”
“For Christ’s sake, is it really so much to ask? Fine. Wait while I backup, then, all right?”
Lil groaned and glared at me.
I approached the terminal and cued a backup. Nothing happened. Oh,yeah, right, I was offline. A cool sweat broke out all over my new body.
Lil grabbed the couch as soon as we got in, mumbling82 somethingabout wanting to work on some revised merch ideas she’d had. I glaredat her as she subvocalized and air-typed in the corner, shut away fromme. I hadn’t told her that I was offline yet—it just seemed like insignificantpersonal bitching relative to the crises she was coping with.
Besides, I’d been knocked offline before, though not in fifty years, andoften as not the system righted itself after a good night’s sleep. I couldvisit the doctor in the morning if things were still screwy.
So I crawled into bed, and when my bladder woke me in the night, Ihad to go into the kitchen to consult our old starburst clock to get thetime. It was 3 a.m., and when the hell had we expunged83 the house of alltimepieces, anyway?
Lil was sacked out on the couch, and complained feebly when I triedto rouse her, so I covered her with a blanket and went back to bed, alone.
I woke disoriented and crabby, without my customary morning jolt84 ofendorphin. Vivid dreams of death and destruction slipped away as I sat52up. I preferred to let my subconscious85 do its own thing, so I’d long agoprogrammed my systems to keep me asleep during REM cycles except inemergencies. The dream left a foul86 taste in my mind as I staggered intothe kitchen, where Lil was fixing coffee.
“Why didn’t you wake me up last night? I’m one big ache from sleepingon the couch,” Lil said as I stumbled in.
She had the perky, jaunty87 quality of someone who could instruct hernervous system to manufacture endorphin and adrenaline at will. I feltlike punching the wall.
“You wouldn’t get up,” I said, and slopped coffee in the general directionof a mug, then scalded my tongue with it.
“And why are you up so late? I was hoping you would cover a shiftfor me—the merch ideas are really coming together and I wanted to hitthe Imagineering shop and try some prototyping.”
“Can’t.” I foraged88 a slice of bread with cheese and noticed a crumbyplate in the sink. Dan had already eaten and gone, apparently89.
“Really?” she said, and my blood started to boil in earnest. I slammedDan’s plate into the dishwasher and shoved bread into my maw.
“Yes. Really. It’s your shift—fucking work it or call in sick.”
Lil reeled. Normally, I was the soul of sweetness in the morning, whenI was hormonally enhanced, anyway. “What’s wrong, honey?” she said,going into helpful castmember mode. Now I wanted to hit something besidesthe wall.
“Just leave me alone, all right? Go fiddle90 with fucking merch. I’ve gotreal work to do—in case you haven’t noticed, Debra’s about to eat youand your little band of plucky91 adventurers and pick her teeth with thebones. For God’s sake, Lil, don’t you ever get fucking angry about anything?
Don’t you have any goddamned passion?”
Lil whitened and I felt a sinking feeling in my gut92. It was the worstthing I could possibly have said.
Lil and I met three years before, at a barbecue that some friends of herparents threw, a kind of castmember mixer. She’d been just19—apparent and real—and had a bubbly, flirty93 vibe that made me dismissher, at first, as just another airhead castmember.
Her parents—Tom and Rita—on the other hand, were fascinatingpeople, members of the original ad-hoc that had seized power in WaltDisney World, wresting94 control from a gang of wealthy former53shareholders who’d been operating it as their private preserve. Rita wasapparent 20 or so, but she radiated a maturity96 and a fiery97 devotion to thePark that threw her daughter’s superficiality into sharp relief.
They throbbed98 with Whuffie, Whuffie beyond measure, beyond use. Ina world where even a zeroed-out Whuffie loser could eat, sleep, traveland access the net without hassle, their wealth was more than sufficientto repeatedly access the piffling few scarce things left on earth over andover.
The conversation turned to the first day, when she and her pals99 hadused a cutting torch on the turnstiles and poured in, wearing homemadecostumes and name tags. They infiltrated100 the shops, the control centers,the rides, first by the hundred, then, as the hot July day ticked by, by thethousand. The shareholders95’ lackeys—who worked the Park for thechance to be a part of the magic, even if they had no control over themanagement decisions—put up a token resistance. Before the day wasout, though, the majority had thrown in their lots with the raiders, handingover security codes and pitching in.
“But we knew the shareholders wouldn’t give in as easy as that,” Lil’smother said, sipping101 her lemonade. “We kept the Park running 24/7 forthe next two weeks, never giving the shareholders a chance to fight backwithout doing it in front of the guests. We’d prearranged with a coupleof airline ad-hocs to add extra routes to Orlando and the guests camepouring in.” She smiled, remembering the moment, and her features inrepose were Lil’s almost identically. It was only when she was talkingthat her face changed, muscles tugging103 it into an expression decadesolder than the face that bore it.
“I spent most of the time running the merch stand at Madame Leota’soutside the Mansion, gladhanding the guests while hissing104 nasties backand forth102 with the shareholders who kept trying to shove me out. I sleptin a sleeping bag on the floor of the utilidor, with a couple dozen others,in three hour shifts. That was when I met this asshole"—she chucked herhusband on the shoulder—"he’d gotten the wrong sleeping bag by mistakeand wouldn’t budge105 when I came down to crash. I just crawled innext to him and the rest, as they say, is history.”
Lil rolled her eyes and made gagging noises. “Jesus, Rita, no one needsto hear about that part of it.”
Tom patted her arm. “Lil, you’re an adult—if you can’t stomach hearingabout your parents’ courtship, you can either sit somewhere else orgrin and bear it. But you don’t get to dictate106 the topic of conversation.”
54Lil gave us adults a very youthful glare and flounced off. Rita shookher head at Lil’s departing backside. “There’s not much fire in that generation,”
she said. “Not a lot of passion. It’s our fault—we thought thatDisney World would be the best place to raise a child in the Bitchun Society.
Maybe it was, but …” She trailed off and rubbed her palms on herthighs, a gesture I’d come to know in Lil, by and by. “I guess there aren’tenough challenges for them these days. They’re too cooperative.” Shelaughed and her husband took her hand.
“We sound like our parents,” Tom said. “’When we were growing up,we didn’t have any of this newfangled life-extension stuff—we took ourchances with the cave bears and the dinosaurs107!’” Tom wore himselfolder, apparent 50, with graying sidewalls and crinkled smile-lines, thebetter to present a non-threatening air of authority to the guests. It was atruism among the first-gen ad-hocs that women castmembers shouldwear themselves young, men old. “We’re just a couple of Bitchun fundamentalists,I guess.”
Lil called over from a nearby conversation: “Are they telling you whata pack of milksops we are, Julius? When you get tired of that, why don’tyou come over here and have a smoke?” I noticed that she and her cohortwere passing a crack pipe.
“What’s the use?” Lil’s mother sighed.
“Oh, I don’t know that it’s as bad as all that,” I said, virtually my firstwords of the afternoon. I was painfully conscious that I was only thereby108 courtesy, just one of the legion of hopefuls who flocked to Orlandoevery year, aspiring109 to a place among the ruling cliques110. “They’re passionateabout maintaining the Park, that’s for sure. I made the mistake oflifting a queue-gate at the Jungleboat Cruise last week and I got a veryearnest lecture about the smooth functioning of the Park from a castmemberwho couldn’t have been more than 18. I think that they don’thave the passion for creating Bitchunry that we have—they don’t needit—but they’ve got plenty of drive to maintain it.”
Lil’s mother gave me a long, considering look that I didn’t know whatto make of. I couldn’t tell if I had offended her or what.
“I mean, you can’t be a revolutionary after the revolution, can you?
Didn’t we all struggle so that kids like Lil wouldn’t have to?”
“Funny you should say that,” Tom said. He had the same consideringlook on his face. “Just yesterday we were talking about the very samething. We were talking—” he drew a breath and looked askance at his55wife, who nodded—"about deadheading. For a while, anyway. See ifthings changed much in fifty or a hundred years.”
I felt a kind of shameful111 disappointment. Why was I wasting my timeschmoozing with these two, when they wouldn’t be around when thetime came to vote me in? I banished112 the thought as quickly as it came—Iwas talking to them because they were nice people. Not every conversationhad to be strategically important.
“Really? Deadheading.” I remember that I thought of Dan then, abouthis views on the cowardice113 of deadheading, on the bravery of ending itwhen you found yourself obsolete114. He’d comforted me once, when mylast living relative, my uncle, opted115 to go to sleep for three thousandyears. My uncle had been born pre-Bitchun, and had never quite gottenthe hang of it. Still, he was my link to my family, to my first adulthoodand my only childhood. Dan had taken me to Gananoque and we’dspent the day bounding around the countryside on seven-league boots,sailing high over the lakes of the Thousand Islands and the crazy fierycarpet of autumn leaves. We topped off the day at a dairy commune heknew where they still made cheese from cow’s milk and there’d been athousand smells and bottles of strong cider and a girl whose name I’dlong since forgotten but whose exuberant116 laugh I’d remember forever.
And it wasn’t so important, then, my uncle going to sleep for three milliennia,because whatever happened, there were the leaves and the lakesand the crisp sunset the color of blood and the girl’s laugh.
“Have you talked to Lil about it?”
Rita shook her head. “It’s just a thought, really. We don’t want toworry her. She’s not good with hard decisions—it’s her generation.”
They changed the subject not long thereafter, and I sensed discomfort,knew that they had told me too much, more than they’d intended. I driftedoff and found Lil and her young pals, and we toked a little andcuddled a little.
Within a month, I was working at the Haunted Mansion, Tom and Ritawere invested in Canopic jars in Kissimee with instructions not to bewoken until their newsbots grabbed sufficient interesting material tomake it worth their while, and Lil and I were a hot item.
Lil didn’t deal well with her parents’ decision to deadhead. For her, itwas a slap in the face, a reproach to her and her generation of twitteringPolyannic castmembers.
56For God’s sake, Lil, don’t you ever get fucking angry about anything?
Don’t you have any goddamned passion?
The words were out of my mouth before I knew I was saying them,and Lil, 15 percent of my age, young enough to be my great-granddaughter;Lil, my lover and best friend and sponsor to the Liberty Squaread-hocracy; Lil turned white as a sheet, turned on her heel and walkedout of the kitchen. She got in her runabout and went to the Park to takeher shift.
I went back to bed and stared at the ceiling fan as it made its lazyturns, and felt like shit.
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alibis
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| 某人在别处的证据( alibi的名词复数 )； 不在犯罪现场的证人； 借口； 托辞 | |
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mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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consultation
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| n.咨询；商量；商议；会议 | |
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shuffled
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| v.洗（纸牌）( shuffle的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚步走；粗心地做；摆脱尘世的烦恼 | |
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nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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oratory
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| n.演讲术；词藻华丽的言辞 | |
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7
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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8
rebounded
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| 弹回( rebound的过去式和过去分词 )； 反弹； 产生反作用； 未能奏效 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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10
narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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receded
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的过去式和过去分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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12
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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13
elegance
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| n.优雅；优美，雅致；精致，巧妙 | |
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basked
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| v.晒太阳，取暖( bask的过去式和过去分词 )；对…感到乐趣；因他人的功绩而出名；仰仗…的余泽 | |
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15
rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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16
incrementally
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| adv.逐渐地 | |
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17
trickled
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| v.滴( trickle的过去式和过去分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动 | |
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18
smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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19
contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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20
grunt
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| v.嘟哝；作呼噜声；n.呼噜声，嘟哝 | |
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21
unintelligibly
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| 难以理解地 | |
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22
groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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23
joints
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| 接头( joint的名词复数 )； 关节； 公共场所（尤指价格低廉的饮食和娱乐场所） （非正式）； 一块烤肉 （英式英语） | |
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24
scurrying
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| v.急匆匆地走( scurry的现在分词 ) | |
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25
concurred
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| 同意（concur的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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26
bugs
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| adj.疯狂的，发疯的n.窃听器( bug的名词复数 )；病菌；虫子；[计算机]（制作软件程序所产生的意料不到的）错误 | |
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27
garner
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| v.收藏；取得 | |
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28
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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29
poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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30
plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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31
rogue
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| n.流氓；v.游手好闲 | |
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32
implicated
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| adj.密切关联的；牵涉其中的 | |
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33
versus
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| prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下 | |
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34
mediate
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| vi.调解，斡旋；vt.经调解解决；经斡旋促成 | |
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35
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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36
tightened
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| 收紧( tighten的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧 | |
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37
knack
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| n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法 | |
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38
assassination
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| n.暗杀；暗杀事件 | |
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39
sabotage
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| n.怠工，破坏活动，破坏；v.从事破坏活动，妨害，破坏 | |
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40
extrude
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| v.挤出；逐出 | |
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41
dynamics
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| n.力学，动力学，动力，原动力；动态 | |
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42
dawdling
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| adj.闲逛的，懒散的v.混（时间）( dawdle的现在分词 ) | |
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43
discrepant
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| 差异的 | |
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44
outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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45
subterranean
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| adj.地下的，地表下的 | |
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46
luster
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| n.光辉；光泽，光亮；荣誉 | |
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47
snarled
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的过去式和过去分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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48
hissed
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| 发嘶嘶声( hiss的过去式和过去分词 )； 发嘘声表示反对 | |
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49
retrieve
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| vt.重新得到，收回；挽回，补救；检索 | |
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50
crux
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| adj.十字形；难事，关键，最重要点 | |
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51
generator
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| n.发电机，发生器 | |
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52
scrap
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| n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废 | |
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53
premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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54
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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55
calf
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| n.小牛，犊，幼仔，小牛皮 | |
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56
calves
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| n.(calf的复数)笨拙的男子，腓；腿肚子( calf的名词复数 )；牛犊；腓；小腿肚v.生小牛( calve的第三人称单数 )；（冰川）崩解；生（小牛等），产（犊）；使（冰川）崩解 | |
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57
fumbled
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| （笨拙地）摸索或处理（某事物）( fumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 乱摸，笨拙地弄； 使落下 | |
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58
cylinder
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| n.圆筒，柱(面)，汽缸 | |
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59
accomplice
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| n.从犯，帮凶，同谋 | |
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60
confiscated
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| 没收，充公( confiscate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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61
Vogue
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| n.时髦，时尚；adj.流行的 | |
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62
stashed
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| v.贮藏( stash的过去式和过去分词 )；隐藏；藏匿；藏起 | |
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63
influential
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| adj.有影响的，有权势的 | |
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64
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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65
auditorium
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| n.观众席，听众席；会堂，礼堂 | |
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66
belle
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| n.靓女 | |
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67
bummed
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| 失望的，沮丧的 | |
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68
haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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69
pricked
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| 刺，扎，戳( prick的过去式和过去分词 )； 刺伤； 刺痛； 使剧痛 | |
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70
refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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71
freckles
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| n.雀斑，斑点( freckle的名词复数 ) | |
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72
relaxation
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| n.松弛，放松；休息；消遣；娱乐 | |
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73
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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74
laconically
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| adv.简短地，简洁地 | |
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75
tuned
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| adj.调谐的，已调谐的v.调音( tune的过去式和过去分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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76
copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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77
clique
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| n.朋党派系，小集团 | |
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78
gateway
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| n.大门口，出入口，途径，方法 | |
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79
exuded
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| v.缓慢流出，渗出，分泌出( exude的过去式和过去分词 )；流露出对（某物）的神态或感情 | |
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80
petulance
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| n.发脾气，生气，易怒，暴躁，性急 | |
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81
whine
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| v.哀号，号哭；n.哀鸣 | |
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82
mumbling
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的现在分词 ) | |
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83
expunged
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| v.擦掉( expunge的过去式和过去分词 )；除去；删去；消除 | |
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84
jolt
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| v.（使）摇动，（使）震动，（使）颠簸 | |
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85
subconscious
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| n./adj.潜意识(的)，下意识(的) | |
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86
foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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87
jaunty
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| adj．愉快的，满足的；adv.心满意足地，洋洋得意地；n.心满意足；洋洋得意 | |
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88
foraged
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| v.搜寻（食物），尤指动物觅（食）( forage的过去式和过去分词 )；（尤指用手）搜寻（东西） | |
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89
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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90
fiddle
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| n.小提琴；vi.拉提琴；不停拨弄，乱动 | |
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91
plucky
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| adj.勇敢的 | |
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92
gut
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| n.[pl.]胆量；内脏；adj.本能的；vt.取出内脏 | |
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93
flirty
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| adj.爱调戏的，轻浮的 | |
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94
wresting
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| 动词wrest的现在进行式 | |
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95
shareholders
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| n.股东( shareholder的名词复数 ) | |
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96
maturity
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| n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期 | |
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97
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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98
throbbed
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| 抽痛( throb的过去式和过去分词 )； （心脏、脉搏等）跳动 | |
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99
pals
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| n.朋友( pal的名词复数 )；老兄；小子；（对男子的不友好的称呼）家伙 | |
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100
infiltrated
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| adj.[医]浸润的v.（使）渗透，（指思想）渗入人的心中( infiltrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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101
sipping
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的现在分词 ) | |
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102
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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103
tugging
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| n.牵引感v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的现在分词 ) | |
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104
hissing
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| n. 发嘶嘶声, 蔑视 动词hiss的现在分词形式 | |
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105
budge
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| v.移动一点儿；改变立场 | |
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106
dictate
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| v.口授；(使)听写；指令，指示，命令 | |
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107
dinosaurs
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| n.恐龙( dinosaur的名词复数 )；守旧落伍的人，过时落后的东西 | |
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108
thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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109
aspiring
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| adj.有志气的；有抱负的；高耸的v.渴望；追求 | |
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110
cliques
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| n.小集团，小圈子，派系( clique的名词复数 ) | |
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111
shameful
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| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
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112
banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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113
cowardice
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| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
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114
obsolete
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| adj.已废弃的，过时的 | |
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115
opted
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| v.选择，挑选( opt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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116
exuberant
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| adj.充满活力的；（植物）繁茂的 | |
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