70
ver said anything of the sort. I think that this is big and exciting and looks like a lot of fun. I think that ringing doorbells and talking people into letting me nail an access point to their walls sounds like a *lot* of fun. Really, I'm not kidding.
"But this is a journey, not a destination. The value you'll get out of this will be more in the doing than the having done. The having done's going to take decades, I'd guess. But the doing's going to be something." Alan's smile was so broad it ached. The idea had seized him. He was drunk on it.
The buzzer sounded and Kurt got up to answer it. Alan craned his neck to see a pair of bearded neohippies in rasta hats.
"Are you Kurt?" one asked.
"Yeah, dude, I'm Kurt."
"Marcel told us that we could make some money here? We're trying to raise bus fare to Burning Man? We could really use the work?"
"Not today, but maybe tomorrow," Kurt said. "Come by around lunchtime."
"You sure you can't use us today?"
"Not today," Kurt said. "I'm busy today."
"All right," the other said, and they slouched away.
"Word of mouth," Kurt said, with a jingling shrug. "Kids just turn up, looking for work with the trash."
"You think they'll come back tomorrow?" Alan was pretty good at evaluating kids and they hadn't looked very reliable.
"Those two? Fifty-fifty chance. Tell you what, though: there's always enough kids and enough junk to go around."
"But you need to make arrangements to get your access points mounted and powered. You've got to sort it out with people who own stores and houses."
"You want to knock on doors?" Kurt said.
"I think I would," Alan said. "I suspect it's a possibility. We can start with the shopkeepers, though."
"I haven't had much luck with merchants," Kurt said, shrugging his shoulders. His chains jingled and a whiff of armpit wafted across the claustrophobic hollow. "Capitalist pigs."
"I can't imagine why," Alan said.
#
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