Makers by Cory Doctorow (best romance ebooks .TXT) đ
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jerkily, then not at all. He snipped a few more wires just to be sure, then tucked them all away.
âHey!â he called. âMy chairâs dead!â He had fetched up in a central pathway where the chairs tried to run cloverleafs around four displays. A couple chairs swerved around him. He thumped the panel dramatically, then stepped out and shook his head. He contrived to step on three robots on the way to another chair.
âIs yours working?â he asked the kid riding in it, all of ten years old and of indefinite gender.
âYeah,â the kid said. It scooted over. âThereâs room for both of us, get in.â
Christ, donât they have stranger-danger in the north? He climbed in beside the kid and contrived to slide one sly hand under the panel. Teasing out the wires the second time was easier, even one-handed. He sliced through five large bundles this time before the chair ground to a halt, its gyros whining and rocking it from side-to-side.
The kid looked at him and frowned. âThese things are shit,â it said with real vehemence, climbing down and kicking one of its tires, and then kicking a couple of the floor-level robots for good measure. Theyâd landed another great breakdown spot: directly in front of a ranked display of raygun-shaped appliances and objects. He remembered seeing that one in its nascent stage, back in Floridaâjust a couple of toy guns, which were presently joined by three more, then there were ten, then fifty, then a high wall of them, striking and charming. The chairâs breakdown position neatly blocked the way.
âGuess weâd better walk out,â he said. He stepped on a couple more robots, making oops noises. The kid enthusiastically kicked robots out of its way. Chairs swerved around them as other riders tried to navigate. They were approaching the exit when Sammy spotted a charge-plate for the robots. They were standard issue for robotic vacuum cleaners and other semi-autonomous appliances, and heâd had one in his old apartment. They were supposed to be safe as anything, but a friendâs toddler had crawled over to his and shoved a stack of dimes into its recessed jack and one of them had shorted it out in a smoking, fizzing fireworks display.
âYou go on ahead, Iâm going to tie my shoes.â
Sammy bent down beside the charge plate, his back to the kid and the imagined cameras that were capturing his every move, and slipped the stack of coins heâd taken from his pocket into the little slot where the robots inserted their charging stamen.
The ensuing shower of sparks was more dramatic than heâd rememberedâmaybe it was the darkened room. The kid shrieked and ran for the EXIT sign, and he took off too, at a good clip. Theyâd get the ride up and running soon enough, but maybe not tonight, not if they couldnât get the two chairs heâd toasted out of the room.
There was the beginnings of chaos at the exit. There was that Tjan character, giving him an intense look. He tried to head for the down escalator, but Tjan cut him off.
âWhatâs going on in there?â
âDamnedest thing,â he said, trying to keep his face composed. âMy chair died. Then another oneâa little kid was riding in it. Then there was a lot of electrical sparks, and I walked out. Crazy.â
Tjan cocked his head. âI hope youâre not hurt. We could have a doctor look at you; there are a couple around tonight.â
It had never occurred to Sammy that professional types might turn out for a ride like this, but of course it was obvious. There were probably off-duty cops, local politicians, lawyers, and the like.
âIâm fine,â he said. âDonât worry about me. Maybe you should send someone in for the people still in there, though?â
âThatâs being taken care of. Iâm just sorry you came all the way from Florida for this kind of disappointment. Thatâs just brutal.â Tjanâs measuring stare was even more intense.
âUh, itâs OK. I had meetings here this week. This was just a cool bonus.â
âWho do you work for, Mickey?â
Shit.
âInsurance company,â he said.
âThatâd be Norwich Union, then, right? Theyâve got a headquarters here.â
Sammy knew how this went. Norwich Union didnât have headquarters here. Or they did. Heâd have to outguess Tjan with his answer.
âAre you going to stay open tonight?â
Tjan nodded, though it wasnât clear whether he was nodding because he was answering in the affirmative or because his suspicions had been confirmed.
âWell then, I should be going.â
Tjan put out a hand. âOh, please stay. Iâm sure weâll be running soon; you should get a whole ride through.â
âNo, really, I have to go.â He shook off the hand and pelted down the escalator and out into the freezing night. His blood sang in his ears. They probably wouldnât get the ride running that night at all. They probably would send that whole carnival crowd home, disappointed. Heâd won some kind of little victory over something.
Heâd felt more confident of his victory when he was concerned with the guy with the funny eyebrowâwith Perry. Heâd seemed little more than a bum, a vag. But this Tjan reminded him of the climbers heâd met through his career at Walt Disney World: keenly observant and fast formulators of strategies. Someone who could add two and two before youâd know that there was such a thing as four.
Sammy walked back to his hotel as quickly as he could, given the icy sidewalks underfoot, and by the time he got to the lobby of the old office tower his face hurtâforehead, cheeks and nose. Heâd booked his return flight for a day later, thinking heâd do more reccies of the new site before writing his report and heading home, but there was no way he was facing down that Tjan guy again.
What had prompted him to sabotage the ride? It was something primal, something he hadnât been in any real control of. Heâd been in some kind of fugue-state. But heâd packed the little knife in his suitcase and heâd slipped it into his pocket before leaving the room. So how instinctive could it possibly have been?
He had a vision of the carnival atmosphere in the market stalls outside and knew that even after the ride had broken down, the crowd had lingered, laughing and browsing and enjoying a nightâs respite from the world and the cold city. The Whos down in Who-ville had gone on singing even after heâd Grinched their ride.
That was it. The ride didnât just make use of user-created contentâit was user-created content. He could never convince his bosses in Orlando to let him build anything remotely like this, and given enough time, it would surely overtake them. That Tjanâsomeone like him wouldnât be involved if there wasnât some serious money opportunity on the line.
Heâd seen the future that night and he had no place in it.
It only took a week on the Boston ride before they had their third and fourth nodes. The third was outside of San Francisco, in a gigantic ghost-mall that was already being used as a flea-market. They had two former anchor-stores, one of which was being squatted by artists who needed studio space. The other one made a perfect location for a new ride, and the geeks who planned on building it had cut their teeth building elaborate Burning Man confectioneries together, so Perry gave them his blessing.
The fourth was to open in Raleigh, in the Research Triangle, where the strip malls ran one into the next. The soft-spoken, bitingly ironic southerners who proposed it were the daughters of old IBM blue-tie stalwarts whoâd been running a womenâs tech collective since they realized they couldnât afford college and dropped out together. They wanted to see how much admission they could charge if they let it be known that they would plow their profits into scholarship funds for local women.
Perry couldnât believe that these people wanted to open their own rides, nor that they thought they needed his permission to do so. He was reminded of the glory days of New Work, when every day there were fifty New Work sites with a hundred new gizmos, popping up on the mailing lists, looking for distributors, recruiting, competing, swarming, arguing, forming and reforming. Watching Tjan cut the deals whereby these people were granted permission to open their own editions of the ride felt like that, and weirder still.
âWhy do they need our permission? The APIâs wide open. They can just implement. Are they sheep or something?â
Tjan gave him an old-fashioned look. âTheyâre being polite, Perryâtheyâre giving you face for being the progenitor of the ride.â
âI donât like it,â Perry said. âI didnât get anyoneâs permission to include their junk in the ride. When we get a printer to clone something that someone brings here, we donât get their permission. Why the hell is seeking permission considered so polite? Shit, why not send me a letter asking me if I mind receiving an email? Where does it end?â
âTheyâre trying to be nice to you Perry, thatâs all.â
âWell I donât like it,â Perry said. âHow about this: from now on when someone asks for permission we tell them no, we donât give out or withhold permission for joining the network, but we hope that theyâll join it anyway. Maybe put up a FAQ on the site.â
âYouâll just confuse people.â
âI wonât be confusing them, man! Iâll be educating them!â
âHow about if you add a Creative Commons license to it? Some of them are very liberal.â
âI donât want to license this. You have to own something to license it. A license is a way of saying, âWithout this license, youâre forbidden to do this.â You donât need a license to click a link and load a webpageâno one has to give you permission to do this and no one could take it away from you. Licensing just gives people even worse ideas about ownership and permission and property!â
âItâs your show,â Tjan said.
âNo it isnât! Thatâs the point!â
âOK, OK, itâs not your show. But weâll do it your way. You are a lovable, cranky weirdo, you know it?â
They did it Perryâs way. He was scheduled to go back to Florida a few days later, but he changed his ticket to go out to San Francisco and meet with the crew who were implementing the ride there. One of them taught interaction design at SFSU and brought him in to talk to the students. He wasnât sure what he was going to talk to them about, but when he got there, he found himself telling the story of how he and Lester and Tjan and Suzanne and Kettlebelly had built and lost the New Work movement, without even trying. It was a fun story to tell from start to finish, and they talked through the lunch break and then a group of students took him to a bar in the Mission with a big outdoor patio where he went on telling war stories until the sun had set and heâd drunk so much beer he couldnât tell stories any longer.
They were all ten or fifteen years younger than him, and the girls were pretty and androgynous and the boys were also pretty and androgynous, not that he really swung that way. Still, it was fine being surrounded by the catcalling, joking, bullshitting crowd of young, pretty, flirty people. They hugged him a lot, and two of
âHey!â he called. âMy chairâs dead!â He had fetched up in a central pathway where the chairs tried to run cloverleafs around four displays. A couple chairs swerved around him. He thumped the panel dramatically, then stepped out and shook his head. He contrived to step on three robots on the way to another chair.
âIs yours working?â he asked the kid riding in it, all of ten years old and of indefinite gender.
âYeah,â the kid said. It scooted over. âThereâs room for both of us, get in.â
Christ, donât they have stranger-danger in the north? He climbed in beside the kid and contrived to slide one sly hand under the panel. Teasing out the wires the second time was easier, even one-handed. He sliced through five large bundles this time before the chair ground to a halt, its gyros whining and rocking it from side-to-side.
The kid looked at him and frowned. âThese things are shit,â it said with real vehemence, climbing down and kicking one of its tires, and then kicking a couple of the floor-level robots for good measure. Theyâd landed another great breakdown spot: directly in front of a ranked display of raygun-shaped appliances and objects. He remembered seeing that one in its nascent stage, back in Floridaâjust a couple of toy guns, which were presently joined by three more, then there were ten, then fifty, then a high wall of them, striking and charming. The chairâs breakdown position neatly blocked the way.
âGuess weâd better walk out,â he said. He stepped on a couple more robots, making oops noises. The kid enthusiastically kicked robots out of its way. Chairs swerved around them as other riders tried to navigate. They were approaching the exit when Sammy spotted a charge-plate for the robots. They were standard issue for robotic vacuum cleaners and other semi-autonomous appliances, and heâd had one in his old apartment. They were supposed to be safe as anything, but a friendâs toddler had crawled over to his and shoved a stack of dimes into its recessed jack and one of them had shorted it out in a smoking, fizzing fireworks display.
âYou go on ahead, Iâm going to tie my shoes.â
Sammy bent down beside the charge plate, his back to the kid and the imagined cameras that were capturing his every move, and slipped the stack of coins heâd taken from his pocket into the little slot where the robots inserted their charging stamen.
The ensuing shower of sparks was more dramatic than heâd rememberedâmaybe it was the darkened room. The kid shrieked and ran for the EXIT sign, and he took off too, at a good clip. Theyâd get the ride up and running soon enough, but maybe not tonight, not if they couldnât get the two chairs heâd toasted out of the room.
There was the beginnings of chaos at the exit. There was that Tjan character, giving him an intense look. He tried to head for the down escalator, but Tjan cut him off.
âWhatâs going on in there?â
âDamnedest thing,â he said, trying to keep his face composed. âMy chair died. Then another oneâa little kid was riding in it. Then there was a lot of electrical sparks, and I walked out. Crazy.â
Tjan cocked his head. âI hope youâre not hurt. We could have a doctor look at you; there are a couple around tonight.â
It had never occurred to Sammy that professional types might turn out for a ride like this, but of course it was obvious. There were probably off-duty cops, local politicians, lawyers, and the like.
âIâm fine,â he said. âDonât worry about me. Maybe you should send someone in for the people still in there, though?â
âThatâs being taken care of. Iâm just sorry you came all the way from Florida for this kind of disappointment. Thatâs just brutal.â Tjanâs measuring stare was even more intense.
âUh, itâs OK. I had meetings here this week. This was just a cool bonus.â
âWho do you work for, Mickey?â
Shit.
âInsurance company,â he said.
âThatâd be Norwich Union, then, right? Theyâve got a headquarters here.â
Sammy knew how this went. Norwich Union didnât have headquarters here. Or they did. Heâd have to outguess Tjan with his answer.
âAre you going to stay open tonight?â
Tjan nodded, though it wasnât clear whether he was nodding because he was answering in the affirmative or because his suspicions had been confirmed.
âWell then, I should be going.â
Tjan put out a hand. âOh, please stay. Iâm sure weâll be running soon; you should get a whole ride through.â
âNo, really, I have to go.â He shook off the hand and pelted down the escalator and out into the freezing night. His blood sang in his ears. They probably wouldnât get the ride running that night at all. They probably would send that whole carnival crowd home, disappointed. Heâd won some kind of little victory over something.
Heâd felt more confident of his victory when he was concerned with the guy with the funny eyebrowâwith Perry. Heâd seemed little more than a bum, a vag. But this Tjan reminded him of the climbers heâd met through his career at Walt Disney World: keenly observant and fast formulators of strategies. Someone who could add two and two before youâd know that there was such a thing as four.
Sammy walked back to his hotel as quickly as he could, given the icy sidewalks underfoot, and by the time he got to the lobby of the old office tower his face hurtâforehead, cheeks and nose. Heâd booked his return flight for a day later, thinking heâd do more reccies of the new site before writing his report and heading home, but there was no way he was facing down that Tjan guy again.
What had prompted him to sabotage the ride? It was something primal, something he hadnât been in any real control of. Heâd been in some kind of fugue-state. But heâd packed the little knife in his suitcase and heâd slipped it into his pocket before leaving the room. So how instinctive could it possibly have been?
He had a vision of the carnival atmosphere in the market stalls outside and knew that even after the ride had broken down, the crowd had lingered, laughing and browsing and enjoying a nightâs respite from the world and the cold city. The Whos down in Who-ville had gone on singing even after heâd Grinched their ride.
That was it. The ride didnât just make use of user-created contentâit was user-created content. He could never convince his bosses in Orlando to let him build anything remotely like this, and given enough time, it would surely overtake them. That Tjanâsomeone like him wouldnât be involved if there wasnât some serious money opportunity on the line.
Heâd seen the future that night and he had no place in it.
It only took a week on the Boston ride before they had their third and fourth nodes. The third was outside of San Francisco, in a gigantic ghost-mall that was already being used as a flea-market. They had two former anchor-stores, one of which was being squatted by artists who needed studio space. The other one made a perfect location for a new ride, and the geeks who planned on building it had cut their teeth building elaborate Burning Man confectioneries together, so Perry gave them his blessing.
The fourth was to open in Raleigh, in the Research Triangle, where the strip malls ran one into the next. The soft-spoken, bitingly ironic southerners who proposed it were the daughters of old IBM blue-tie stalwarts whoâd been running a womenâs tech collective since they realized they couldnât afford college and dropped out together. They wanted to see how much admission they could charge if they let it be known that they would plow their profits into scholarship funds for local women.
Perry couldnât believe that these people wanted to open their own rides, nor that they thought they needed his permission to do so. He was reminded of the glory days of New Work, when every day there were fifty New Work sites with a hundred new gizmos, popping up on the mailing lists, looking for distributors, recruiting, competing, swarming, arguing, forming and reforming. Watching Tjan cut the deals whereby these people were granted permission to open their own editions of the ride felt like that, and weirder still.
âWhy do they need our permission? The APIâs wide open. They can just implement. Are they sheep or something?â
Tjan gave him an old-fashioned look. âTheyâre being polite, Perryâtheyâre giving you face for being the progenitor of the ride.â
âI donât like it,â Perry said. âI didnât get anyoneâs permission to include their junk in the ride. When we get a printer to clone something that someone brings here, we donât get their permission. Why the hell is seeking permission considered so polite? Shit, why not send me a letter asking me if I mind receiving an email? Where does it end?â
âTheyâre trying to be nice to you Perry, thatâs all.â
âWell I donât like it,â Perry said. âHow about this: from now on when someone asks for permission we tell them no, we donât give out or withhold permission for joining the network, but we hope that theyâll join it anyway. Maybe put up a FAQ on the site.â
âYouâll just confuse people.â
âI wonât be confusing them, man! Iâll be educating them!â
âHow about if you add a Creative Commons license to it? Some of them are very liberal.â
âI donât want to license this. You have to own something to license it. A license is a way of saying, âWithout this license, youâre forbidden to do this.â You donât need a license to click a link and load a webpageâno one has to give you permission to do this and no one could take it away from you. Licensing just gives people even worse ideas about ownership and permission and property!â
âItâs your show,â Tjan said.
âNo it isnât! Thatâs the point!â
âOK, OK, itâs not your show. But weâll do it your way. You are a lovable, cranky weirdo, you know it?â
They did it Perryâs way. He was scheduled to go back to Florida a few days later, but he changed his ticket to go out to San Francisco and meet with the crew who were implementing the ride there. One of them taught interaction design at SFSU and brought him in to talk to the students. He wasnât sure what he was going to talk to them about, but when he got there, he found himself telling the story of how he and Lester and Tjan and Suzanne and Kettlebelly had built and lost the New Work movement, without even trying. It was a fun story to tell from start to finish, and they talked through the lunch break and then a group of students took him to a bar in the Mission with a big outdoor patio where he went on telling war stories until the sun had set and heâd drunk so much beer he couldnât tell stories any longer.
They were all ten or fifteen years younger than him, and the girls were pretty and androgynous and the boys were also pretty and androgynous, not that he really swung that way. Still, it was fine being surrounded by the catcalling, joking, bullshitting crowd of young, pretty, flirty people. They hugged him a lot, and two of
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