Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

organicvegetariania.

  "Hi there!" Arnold said pocketing the book and dusting off his hands.

  "Hey," the guy said into his stringy beard, fumbling with akeyring. "I'll be opening up in a couple minutes, okay? I know I'mlate. It's a bad day. okay?"

  Arnold held his hands up, palms out. "Hey, no problem at all! Take asmuch time as you need. I'm in no hurry."

  The anarchist hustled around inside the shop, turning on lights, firingup the cash-register and counting out a float, switching on the coffeemachine. Alan waited patiently by the doorway, holding the door openwith his toe when the clerk hauled out a rack of discounted paperbacksand earning a dirty look for his trouble.

  "Okay, we're open," the anarchist said looking Alan in the toes. Heturned around and banged back into the shop and perched himself behindthe counter, opening a close-typed punk newspaper and burying his nosein it.

  Adam walked in behind him and stood at the counter, politely,waiting. The anarchist looked up from his paper and shook his headexasperatedly. "Yes?"

  Alan extended his hand. "Hi, I'm Archie, I work with Kurt, over onAugusta?"

  The anarchist stared at his hand, then shook it limply.

  "Okay," he said.

  "So, Kurt mentioned that he'd spoken to your collective about putting awireless repeater up over your sign?"

  The anarchist shook his head. "We decided not to do that, okay." He wentback to his paper.

  Andrew considered him for a moment. "So, what's your name?"

  "I don't like to give out my name," the anarchist said. "Call me Waldo,all right?"

  "All right," Andy said smiling. "That's fine by me. So, can I ask whyyou decided not to do it?"

  "It doesn't fit with our priorities. We're here to make print materialsabout the movement available to the public. They can get Internet accesssomewhere else. Internet access is for people who can afford computers,anyway."

  "Good point," Art said. "That's a good point. I wonder if I could askyou to reconsider, though? I'd love a chance to try to explain why thisshould be important to you."

  "I don't think so," Waldo said. "We're not really interested."

  "I think you *would* be interested, if it were properly explained toyou."

  Waldo picked up his paper and pointedly read it, breathing heavily.

  "Thanks for your time," Avi said and left.

  #

  "That's *bullshit*," Kurt said. "Christ, those people --"

  "I assumed that there was some kind of politics," Austin said, "and Ididn't want to get into the middle of it. I know that if I could get achance to present to the whole group, that I could win them over."

  Kurt shook his head angrily. His shop was better organized now, with sixaccess points ready to go and five stuck to the walls as a test bed fornew versions of the software. A couple of geeky Korean kids were seatedat the communal workbench, eating donuts and wrestling with drivers.

  "It's all politics with them. Everything. You should hear them argueabout whether it's cool to feed meat to the store cat! Who was workingbehind the counter?"

  "He wouldn't tell me his name. He told me to call him --"

  "Waldo."

  "Yeah."

  "Well, that could be any of about six of them, then. That's what theytell the cops. They probably thought you were a narc or a fed orsomething."

  "I see."

  "It's not total paranoia. They've been busted before -- it's alwaysbullshit. I raised bail for a couple of them once."

  Andrew realized that Kurt thought he was offended at being mistaken fora cop, but he got that. He was weird -- visibly weird. Out of placewherever he was.

  "So they owe me. Let me talk to them some more."

  "Thanks, Kurt. I appreciate it."

  "Well, you're doing all the heavy lifting these days. It's the least Ican do."

  Alan clapped a hand on his shoulder. "None of this would exist withoutyou, you know." He waved his hand to take in the room, the Korean kids,the whole Market. "I saw a bunch of people at the Greek's with laptops,showing them around to each other and drinking beers. In the park, withPDAs. I see people sitting on their porches, typing in thetwilight. Crouched in doorways. Eating a bagel in the morning on abench. People are finding it, and it's thanks to you."

  Kurt smiled a shy smile. "You're just trying to cheer me up," he said.

  "Course I am," Andy said. "You deserve to be full of cheer."

  #

  "Don't bother," Andy said. "Seriously, it's not worth it. We'll justfind somewhere else to locate the repeater. It's not worth all thebullshit you're getting."

  "Screw that. They told me that they'd take one. They're the only ones*I* talked into it. My contribution to the effort. And they're fucking*anarchists* -- they've *got* to be into this. It's totally irrational!"He was almost crying.

  "I don't want you to screw up your friendships, Kurt. They'll comearound on their own. You're turning yourself inside out over this, andit's just not worth it. Come on, it's cool." He turned around his laptopand showed the picture to Kurt. "Check it out, people with tails. Anentire gallery of them!" There were lots of pictures like that on thenet. None of people without belly buttons, though.

  Kurt took a pull off his beer. "Disgusting," he said and clicked throughthe gallery.

  The Greek looked over their shoulder. "It's real?"

  "It's real, Larry," Alan said. "Freaky, huh?"

  "That's terrible," the Greek said. "Pah." There were five or six othernetwork users out on the Greek's, and it was early yet. By five-thirty,there'd be fifty of them. Some of them brought their own power strips sothat they could share juice with their coreligionists.

  "You really want me to give up?" Kurt asked, once the Greek had givenhim a new beer and a scowling look over the litter of picked-at beerlabel on the table before him.

  "I really think you should," Alan said. "It's a poor use of time."

  Kurt looked ready to cry again. Adam had no idea what to say.

  "Okay," Kurt said. "Fine." He finished his beer in silence and slunkaway.

  #

  But it wasn't fine, and Kurt wouldn't give it up. He kept on beating hishead against the blank wall, and every time Alan saw him, he was grimmerthan the last.

  "Let it *go*," Adam said. "I've done a deal with the vacuum-cleanerrepair guy across the street." A weird-but-sweet old Polish Holocaustsurvivor who'd listened attentively to Andy's pitch before announcingthat he'd been watching all the hardware go up around the Market and hadsimply been waiting to be included in the club. "That'll cover thatcorner just fine."

  "I'm going to throw a party," Kurt said. "Here, in the shop. No, I'llrent out one of the warehouses on Oxford. I'll invite them, the kids,everyone who's let us put up an access point, a big mill-and-swill. Buya couple kegs. No one can resist free beer."

  Alan had started off frustrated and angry with Kurt, but this drew himup and turned him around. "That is a *fine* idea," he said. "We'llinvite Lyman."

  #

  Lyman had taken to showing up on Alan's stoop in the morning sometimes,on his way to work, for a cup of coffee. He'd taken to showing up atKurt's shop in the afternoon, sometimes, on his way home from work, tomarvel at the kids' industry. His graybeard had written some code thatanalyzed packet loss and tried to make guesses about the crowd densityin different parts of the Market, and Lyman took a proprietary interestin it, standing out by Bikes on Wheels or the Portuguese furniture storeand watching the data on his PDA, comparing it with the actual crowds onthe street.

  He'd only hesitated for a second when Andrew asked him to be theinaugural advisor on ParasiteNet's board, and once he'd said yes, itbecame clear to everyone that he was endlessly fascinated by theirlittle adhocracy and its experimental telco potential.

  "This party sounds like a great idea," he said. He was buying thedrinks, because he was the one with five-hundred-dollar glasses and afull-suspension racing bike. "Lookit that," he said.

  From the Greek's front window, they could see Oxford Street and a li
ttleof Augusta, and Lyman loved using his PDA and his density analysissoftware while he sat, looking from his colored map to the crowdscene. "Lookit the truck as it goes down Oxford and turns upAugusta. That signature is so distinctive, I could spot it in mysleep. I need to figure out how to sell this to someone -- maybe thecops or