Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow (ebook reader that looks like a book txt) 📖

at the counter, politely,
waiting. The anarchist looked up from his paper and shook his head
exasperatedly. "Yes?"

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

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 a
wireless repeater up over your sign?"

The anarchist shook his head. "We decided not to do that, okay." He went
back 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 why
you decided not to do it?"

"It doesn't fit with our priorities. We're here to make print materials
about the movement available to the public. They can get Internet access
somewhere 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 ask
you to reconsider, though? I'd love a chance to try to explain why this
should 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 to
you."

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 I
didn't want to get into the middle of it. I know that if I could get a
chance to present to the whole group, that I could win them over."

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

"It's all politics with them. Everything. You should hear them argue
about whether it's cool to feed meat to the store cat! Who was working
behind 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 they
tell the cops. They probably thought you were a narc or a fed or
something."

"I see."

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

Andrew realized that Kurt thought he was offended at being mistaken for
a cop, but he got that. He was weird -- visibly weird. Out of place
wherever 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 I
can do."

Alan clapped a hand on his shoulder. "None of this would exist without
you, 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, with
PDAs. I see people sitting on their porches, typing in the
twilight. Crouched in doorways. Eating a bagel in the morning on a
bench. 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 just
find somewhere else to locate the repeater. It's not worth all the
bullshit 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 come
around on their own. You're turning yourself inside out over this, and
it's just not worth it. Come on, it's cool." He turned around his laptop
and showed the picture to Kurt. "Check it out, people with tails. An
entire gallery of them!" There were lots of pictures like that on the
net. None of people without belly buttons, though.

Kurt took a pull off his beer. "Disgusting," he said and clicked through
the 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 other
network 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 so
that they could share juice with their coreligionists.

"You really want me to give up?" Kurt asked, once the Greek had given
him a new beer and a scowling look over the litter of picked-at beer
label 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 slunk
away.

#

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

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

"I'm going to throw a party," Kurt said. "Here, in the shop. No, I'll
rent 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. Buy
a couple kegs. No one can resist free beer."

Alan had started off frustrated and angry with Kurt, but this drew him
up and turned him around. "That is a *fine* idea," he said. "We'll
invite 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 at
Kurt's shop in the afternoon, sometimes, on his way home from work, to
marvel at the kids' industry. His graybeard had written some code that
analyzed packet loss and tried to make guesses about the crowd density
in different parts of the Market, and Lyman took a proprietary interest
in it, standing out by Bikes on Wheels or the Portuguese furniture store
and watching the data on his PDA, comparing it with the actual crowds on
the street.

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

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

From the Greek's front window, they could see Oxford Street and a little
of Augusta, and Lyman loved using his PDA and his density analysis
software while he sat, looking from his colored map to the crowd
scene. "Lookit the truck as it goes down Oxford and turns up
Augusta. That signature is so distinctive, I could spot it in my
sleep. I need to figure out how to sell this to someone -- maybe the
cops or something." He tipped Andy a wink.

Kurt opened and shut his mouth a few times, and Lyman slapped his palm
down on the table. "You look like you're going to bust something," he
said. "Don't worry. I kid. Damn, you've got you some big, easy-to-push
buttons."

Kurt made a face. "You wanted to sell our stuff to luxury hotels. You
tried to get us to present at the *SkyDome*. You're capable of
anything."

"The SkyDome would be a great venue for this stuff," Lyman said settling
into one of his favorite variations of bait-the-anarchist.

"The SkyDome was built with tax-dollars that should have been spent on
affordable housing, then was turned over to rich pals of the premier for
a song, who then ran it into the ground, got bailed out by the province,
and then it got turned over to different rich pals. You can just shut up
about the goddamned SkyDome. You'd have to break both of my legs and
*carry me* to get me to set foot in there."

"About the party," Adam said. "About the party."

"Yes, certainly," Lyman said. "Kurt, behave."

Kurt belched loudly, provoking a scowl from the Greek.

#

The Waldos all showed up in a bunch, with plastic brown liter bottles
filled with murky homemade beer and a giant bag of skunk-weed. The party
had only been on for a couple hours, but it had already balkanized into
inward-facing groups: merchants, kids, hackers. Kurt kept turning the
music way up ("If they're not going to talk with one another, they might
as well dance." "Kurt, those people are old. Old people don't dance to
music like this." "Shut up, Lyman." "Make me."), and Andy kept turning
it down.

The bookstore people drifted in, then stopped and moved vaguely toward
the middle of the floor, there to found their own breakaway
conversational republic. Lyman startled. "Sara?" he said and one of the
anarchists looked up sharply.

"Lyman?" She had two short ponytails and a round face that made her look
teenage young, but on closer inspection she was more Lyman's age,
mid-thirties. She laughed and crossed the gap to their little republic
and threw her arms around Lyman's neck. "Crispy Christ, what are *you*
doing here?"

"I work with these guys!" He turned to Arnold and Kurt. "This is my
cousin Sara," he said. "These are Albert and Kurt. I'm helping them
out."

"Hi, Sara," Kurt said.

"Hey, Kurt," she said looking away. It was clear even to Alan that they
knew each other already. The other bookstore people were looking on with
suspicion, drinking their beer out of refillable coffee-store thermos
cups.

"It's great to meet you!" Alan said taking her hand in both of his and
shaking it hard. "I'm really glad you folks came down."

She looked askance at him, but Lyman interposed himself. "Now, Sara,
these guys really, really wanted to talk something over with you all,
but they've been having a hard time getting a hearing."

Kurt and Alan traded uneasy glances. They'd carefully planned out a
subtle easeway into this conversation, but Lyman was running with it.

"You didn't know that I was involved, huh?"

"Surprised the hell outta me," Lyman said. "Will you hear them out?"

She looked back at her collective. "What the hell. Yeah, I'll talk 'em
into it."

#

"It starts with the sinking of the *Titanic*," Kurt said. They'd
arranged their mismatched chairs in a circle in the cramped back room of
the bookstore and were drinking and eating organic crumbly things with
the taste and