Another “Habst” Chapter with More Backstage Pictures!

Time for another chapter from Habst and the Disney Saboteurs, complete with the backstage research pictures I used while writing it! Credit for these goes to Google Earth, The Original E.P.C.O.T., Imagineering Disney (once again!), and an awesome friend who would prefer to remain anonymous.

If you enjoyed this chapter and the last one I posted, be sure to pick up a copy of Habst. I prefer the paperback edition due to some fun layout/font formatting that doesn’t transfer to the ebook, but if you’re still on the fence, the ebook is currently only $2.99!

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CHAPTER 1

Reginald “Habst” Habstermeister pedaled down an empty road towards the Castle. He turned a corner, stopped, squinted into the sun, and choked back a wave of nausea. It was 10AM. He hadn’t been up this early in months.

He chained his bike to a light pole near the entrance to the Buena Vista Place apartment complex, pulled his fake ID out of his backpack, slung it around his neck, and walked across the street to the Cast Member parking lot. At the southwest end of the lot was a bus station. Since he’d arrived just after everyone assigned to the final morning shift would have clocked in, the bus stop was empty. He sat at the station, shaded from the sun by a green tarp, and waited. He sweated clear through his shirt.

Habst checked the time on his phone. 10:30AM. Ninety minutes left.

“Stupid busses,” he mumbled. “How hard would it be to build some more PeopleMovers?”

The bus finally pulled up. Habst tapped his counterfeit Cast Member ID onto the RFID reader, which turned green. The name on the ID read “Blaine McKinnon”. As he boarded, he noticed that the air conditioner was broken. It was hotter in the bus than it was outside.

“Seriously?” he asked the driver.

“At least you don’t gotta sit in here all day, buddy,” said the old man. “I lost about twenty pounds in the past three hours.”

“Sucks to be you,” said Habst. He sat down in the first row. Aside from the driver, the bus was empty.

As they departed the station, he checked his phone for the sixth time in as many minutes, trying to memorize his marching orders. The encrypted message he’d received the previous night read:

Night-vision shot of Stitch. Please get two run-thrus – one from each theater. Also, Progress City model. Entrances, electrical, and close-ups of any broken parts. Need it by 12PM EDT. Payment is 2 VTC.

He locked the phone and put it away as the bus pulled into the station at the Utilidors entrance behind Pinocchio Village Haus.

“Stay cool,” he said, exiting the bus.

“Very funny, asshole,” said the driver.

Habst walked down the huge sloped ramp into the tunnels and was again overcome with nausea. Whenever the temperature rose over ninety degrees, which happened a lot in Florida, the Utilidors smelled worse than the local dump. The pipes that ferried the trash from the park to the central waste-disposal area were pneumatic, and they weren’t exactly airtight. Today they were dispensing a particularly pungent blend of puke and dirty diapers.

He walked as quickly as he could towards Tomorrowland. A golf cart zoomed past him, nearly knocking him down.

“Learn how to drive, dickface!” he yelled.

“Fuck off!” the driver yelled back.

“Eat a bag of cocks, cock!” yelled Habst. “Jerkwad.”

“Well that certainly isn’t language befitting of a prince,” said a sing-songy voice to his left.

He turned and saw Jasmine, dressed in a blue jewel-encrusted bra and matching parachute pants. She twirled a finger through her pitch-black wig, sucked in her exposed stomach and thrust forward her deeply tanned breasts.

“Huh?”

“You’re a new ‘friend’ of Prince Charming, aren’t you?”

“What? Where the hell did you get that from?”

“All of the attractive guys down here are face characters!”

Habst stared at her. He was completely oblivious to the fact that she was coming onto him. He was always oblivious when a girl was coming onto him.

“Ooh, and you have Prince Charming’s lovely blue eyes, too.”

“Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so. Would you like to?”

“Uh, maybe? I mean, you seem nice enough. I’m kind of in a hurry, though.”

“Well, I’m going on my break, and I could use some help getting out of this costume. The clasp on the bra is really hard to undo.”

“That sucks. They should totally be able to help you with that in Costuming, though.”

“Oh, okay,” said Jasmine.

“I really gotta go. Good luck with that bra!”

Habst turned and quickly walked away, leaving Jasmine standing in the middle of the tunnel.

“Why are all the hot ones gay?!” she yelled, stomping her foot and storming off towards the Mouseketeria.

“What a weird girl,” said Habst.

He turned left, and continued his trek to Tomorrowland. After a few minutes the painted stripe on the wall changed from pink to blue, and he reached a familiar stairway. He bounded up the stairs two at a time, went down a dark hallway, opened a door, and was blinded by the harsh Florida sun. Straight ahead was the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover, and to his left was Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin.

He stashed his fake ID in the front pocket of his backpack and pulled out a stacked bank of four rechargeable Polaroid infrared LED lights. He checked the charge on them and returned them to the backpack. Next, he pulled out his matte black, rooted, and heavily modded HTC One Android phone, switched to the camera app, and made sure the optical image stabilization was enabled and that he had plenty of free storage space. Everything checked out, so he put the phone away and nonchalantly walked over to Stitch’s Great Escape.

He hated this attraction. The thought of going on it twice depressed him. But 2 VTC meant a full ounce of pot, and that was easily worth two run-thrus.

Not surprisingly, he was the only one in each theater both times. So, twice he powered up his infrared light bank, held it next to his phone, pressed record, and endured ear-splitting sound effects and Stitch’s horrible fart burps. While he couldn’t see what was going on during the blackouts, his phone could record in the infrared spectrum and pick up everything with incredible detail. Even though he had no idea what he was pointing the camera at, he did his best to get a variety of angles in order to make his benefactor happy.

At the end of the second pass, he stumbled out of the theater into the Merchant of Venus, turned the corner, and entered Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Café. Checking his watch, he saw that he still had thirty minutes remaining.

Plenty of time, he thought.

He made a beeline for the Topping Bar, where he grabbed a small paper condiment cup, filled it with sautéed mushrooms, squirted hot processed cheese over it, and dumped the entire mess into his mouth. He repeated this six more times, earning a disapproving glare from the Cast Member attending the Topping Bar. He smiled at her charmingly and then walked over to a table across from Sonny Eclipse.

As the show played, Habst scanned through the Stitch videos, and was astounded by how much was going on that was never seen by Guests. The attraction might suck, but these were actually pretty cool behind-the-scenes videos. His one hundred thousand or so subscribers would be thrilled, and hopefully his benefactor would be, too. He opened his YouTube app and started uploading both takes.

He put his Cast Member ID back on and started recording again.

Across from the bathrooms by the patio entrance were two inconspicuous doors. He opened the one on the left, went through it, and walked up a staircase. A roar of white noise grew louder until he reached the top of the stairs, at which point the sound was almost deafening. Massive industrial cooling units filled the vast room. He walked past them towards a small steel ladder bolted to the wall. The ladder was draped in a black cloth.

Still filming, he pulled the cloth aside and climbed up the ladder to a catwalk. He hoisted himself onto the narrow walkway, which was flanked with a scrim that kept light from entering the dark tunnel below, through which the PeopleMovers traveled. On his right was a safety railing, and past the railing was a gorgeous overhead view of Walt Disney’s Progress City model.

The model had been built for Walt’s 1966 EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) promo film, and then expanded and displayed on the top floor of the Carousel of Progress in Disneyland. As originally presented, the model was a futuristic cityscape featuring a massive skyscraper hotel in the center, with PeopleMovers and monorails radiating outward from it. The model was a visual representation of what was to be an urban planning experiment unlike any the world had ever seen.

In fact, EPCOT was the sole reason why Walt had bought so much property in Florida. He had intended to create a new kind of city, where every detail was designed from the ground, and underground, up. In that EPCOT promo film, which was his last filmed appearance, Walt described the city as a project grander and more ambitious than anything he had ever attempted. Tragically, he died soon after announcing the project. Eventually, without his vision and leadership, plans for building the city were abandoned, and EPCOT Center, a theme park, was built instead.

Just as plans for the city itself were scrapped, so was a large part of the Progress City model. At least two-thirds of it had been destroyed when it had been moved from Disneyland to the Magic Kingdom in 1975. And even though the remainder had recently undergone a minor refurbishment, much of it was already in piss-poor condition due to non-existent maintenance. Many of the miniature lights were burned out, and none of the vehicles moved. Paint peeled in places, and there was a layer of dust coating the entire thing that appeared to be an inch thick in places.

The Disney Company had, both figuratively and literally, destroyed a large portion of Walt’s unique vision of the future of urban living, and had left the rest to decay through benign neglect.

It made Habst angry. Very angry. He couldn’t understand why something so amazingly awesome had been treated so poorly. It was easily the best part of the PeopleMover ride. He’d crane his head at extreme angles as the car whisked past the model, trying to soak in every last detail before it passed out of sight, and desperately hoping the ride would break down in front of it so he could stare at it for longer. He wanted to live in Progress City. It seemed like a place where nothing bad happened, and where technology had solved all of the world’s problems….

He filmed the model in great detail, zooming in for close-ups of every building. The camera shook slightly as PeopleMovers passed through the tunnel below.

After ten minutes, Habst walked back across the catwalk, climbed down the ladder, and went through a door by one of the cooling units. The door opened to a flat wall, which was the model’s painted-sky backdrop. A square hole had been cut into the bottom of the backdrop. Habst crawled through the hole and into the underside of the model. He filmed all of the machinery and ancient wires routed under the city, trying his best to trace them back to their junction points. Some of the solder joints at the edge of the model had fallen apart, and wires were dangling free. He saw one arcing against a metal beam.

“Total fire hazard,” he said into the camera. “Real nice, Disney.”

Satisfied that he’d filmed everything of interest, he stopped recording, opened the YouTube app on his phone, and began uploading the video to his channel, with five minutes left on the clock.

A job well done. Time for a celebratory toke.

Habst walked out of the small room and looked around, verifying that the coast was clear. He was pretty sure nobody ever came up here, as evidenced by a layer of dust on the floor. He confidently pulled a small baggie out of a special airtight compartment in his backpack. The baggie contained a glass pipe, a Colibri lighter, and some OG Kush. He stuffed the pipe, flicked the lighter, inhaled a huge hit, held it for a few seconds, and exhaled into one of the cooling units. The smoke disappeared.

—

Downstairs, a security guard passed a vent in the restaurant and sniffed the air. The scent was unmistakable. He pulled out his radio.

“Sam 12, copy?”

“Copy.”

“Uh, we’ve got a fragrant 904 coming from the vents in Cosmic Ray’s. Copy?”

“A fragrant 904?”

“10-4. I don’t think we have a code for this.”

“Ah, okay, copy. Can you trace the source?”

“Well, there are those chillers upstairs…. So….”

“10-4. 514 authorized for chillers. Have a feeling I know exactly who is up there. Dispatching three of the dwarfs to help clean the house. Sam 12 out.”

—

Upstairs, Habst packed his bowl for the fourth time. The OG Kush was strong, but his tolerance bordered on legendary. He pulled another hit and exhaled just as the security guard walked through the door on the other side of the room.

“Oops,” said Habst.

“Hey!” shouted the security guard.

“It’s for joint pain, I swear!”

The security guard ran towards him. Habst bolted, scaled the steel ladder on the other side of the room, and ran across the catwalk above the Progress City model. Only then did he remember that it was a dead end.

“Dammit!”

The security guard appeared at the far end of the catwalk, grabbed onto the railing, and bent over, sweat dripping from his face.

“Hey!” he yelled again, gasping for air.

“Can’t you say anything else?”

“Get over here, you fucking asshole!”

“C’mon, man! There could be kids down there!”

“Huh?” said the guard. A look of shock came over the his face as he felt the rumble of an approaching car and realized the PeopleMover track lay less than ten feet beneath them on the other side of the scrim.

Habst pushed the scrim aside, saw an empty car pulling into the tunnel, looked back up at the guard, smiled, waved, and jumped off the catwalk into the car below. The guard stood there, flabbergasted, as Habst coasted away through the dark corridor.

“Sam 12?”

“Copy.”

“The 904 guy just jumped onto a moving PeopleMover car from the catwalk above that future city model.”

“What?! I mean… copy? There’s a catwalk up there?”

“10-4. I’m standing on it.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“So… I guess send the dwarfs to the ride exit?”

“10-4. Rerouting dwarfs.”

“Good luck.”

“Sam 12 out.”

Habst saw the guards as soon as the car turned the corner into the long stretch back to the loading platform. There was nowhere for him to go. On this section of the track the drop from the car to the ground was a good twenty feet. He’d never make it.

He pulled off his fake ID, removed his shoe, put the ID in the shoe, and put the shoe back on. It was uncomfortable, but he didn’t want to risk a felony charge at this point. He pulled the baggie out of his backpack, ate the gram of OG Kush, threw the pipe over the side of the car into the tree on his left, and pocketed the Colibri. Moments later, the cab pulled into the loading area, where three security guards were waiting for him.

“Well if it isn’t Angry, Fatty, and Smelly!” said Habst. “Haven’t seen you boys in a while. How’re the families? Trailer park still treating you well?”

Fatty and Angry grabbed his arms. Smelly got up in his face.

“Mr. Habstermeister. After all the shit you’ve given us over the years, you can’t imagine how pleased I am to see you right now.”

“Jesus. Ever heard of a toothbrush?”

Smelly got even closer and punched him in the stomach. Habst would have doubled over if he wasn’t being held tightly by Fatty and Angry. He struggled to catch his breath.

“You jerks are one step below goddamned mall cops.”

“Yeah, well these mall cops just nailed your druggie ass,” said Angry. “I hope you get locked up and butt raped.”

“Dude! What is it with you guys?” Habst said, looking at the small crowd that had formed on the platform. A mother covered her daughter’s ears.

Angry looked at the mother and daughter, and turned bright red.

“Get him out of here!”

The guards roughly pulled Habst down the moving walkway. He stood there with them for a second as they descended, and then turned to Fatty.

“You got any snacks? I know you got snacks, dude. Like, maybe some pizza Combos? I love Combos. No joke, man, I’m super hungry. This is cruel and unusual punishment!”

Fatty shook his head as the four of them stepped off the moving walkway. The guards led him past the Tomorrowland Terrace, through a switchback that led backstage, and into the security office on the backside of Main Street.

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Habst and the Disney Saboteurs can be found on Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and B&N.