And then she was back in her car with all her blankets, sheets,

pillows, big towels -- even the sofa cushions, which the landlord was

not going to be happy about -- and speeding back to the workshop.

She let herself in and set about distributing the blankets and pillows

and towels, picking out the families, the old people. A woman --

apparently able-bodied and young, but skinny -- sat up and said, "Hey,

where's one for me?" Suzanne recognized the voice. The junkie from the

IHOP. Lester's friend. The one who'd grabbed her and cursed her.

She didn't want to give the woman a blanket. She only had two left and

there were old people lying on the bare floor.

"Where's one for me?" the woman said more loudly. Some of the sleepers

stirred. Some of them sat up.

Suzanne was shaking. Who the hell was she to decide who got a blanket?

Did being rude to her at the IHOP disqualify you from getting bedding

when your house burned down?

Suzanne gave her a blanket, and she snatched one of the sofa cushions

besides.

*It's why she's still alive,* Suzanne thought. *How she's survived.*

She gave away the last blanket and went home to sleep on her naked bed

underneath an old coat, a rolled-up sweater for a pillow. After her

shower, she dried herself on tee-shirts, having given away all her

towels to use as bedding.

The new shantytown went up fast -- faster than she'd dreamed

possible. The boys helped. Lester downloaded all the information he

could find on temporary shelters -- building out of mud, out of

sandbags, out of corrugated cardboard and sheets of plastic -- and

they tried them all. Some of the houses had two or more

rickety-seeming stories, but they all felt solid enough as she toured

them, snapping photos of proud homesteaders standing next to their

handiwork.

Little things went missing from the workshops -- tools, easily pawned

books and keepsakes, Perry's wallet -- and they all started locking

their desk-drawers. There were junkies in among the squatters, and

desperate people, and immoral people, them too. One day she found that

her cute little gold earrings weren't beside her desk-lamp, where

she'd left them the night before and she practically burst into tears,

feeling set-upon on all sides.

She found the earrings later that day, at the bottom of her purse, and

that only made things worse. Even though she hadn't voiced a single

accusation, she'd accused every one of the squatters in her mind that

day. She found herself unable to meet their eyes for the rest of the

week.

"I have to write about this," she said to Perry. "This is part of the

story." She'd stayed clear of it for a month, but she couldn't go on

writing about the successes of the Home Aware without writing about

the workforce that was turning out the devices and add-ons by the

thousands, all around her, in impromptu factories with impromptu

workers.

"Why?" Perry said. He'd been a dervish, filling orders, training

people, fighting fires. By nightfall, he was hollow-eyed and

snappish. Lester didn't join them on the roof anymore. He liked to

hang out with Francis and some of the young men and pitch horseshoes

down in the shantytown, or tinker with the composting toilets he'd

been installing at strategic crossroads through the town. "Can't you

just concentrate on the business?"

"Perry, this *is* the business. Kettlewell hasn't sent a replacement

for Tjan and you've filled in and you've turned this place into

something like a worker-owned co-op. That's important news -- the

point of this exercise is to try all the different businesses that are

possible and see what works. If you've found something that works, I

should write about it. Especially since it's not just solving

Kodacell's problem, it's solving the problem for all of those people,

too."

Perry drank his beer in sullen silence. "I don't want Kettlewell to

get more involved in this. It's going good. Scrutiny could kill it."

"You've got nothing to be embarrassed about here," she said. "There's

nothing here that isn't as it should be."

Perry looked at her for a long moment. He was at the end of his fuse,

trying to do too much, and she regretted having brought it up. "You do

what you have to do," he said.

:: The original shantytown was astonishing. Built around a nexus of ::

trailers and RVs that didn't look in the least roadworthy, the ::

settlers had added dwelling on dwelling to their little patch of ::

land. They started with plastic sheeting and poles, and when they ::

could afford it, they replaced the sheets, one at a time, with ::

bricks or poured concrete and re-bar. They thatched their roofs ::

with palm-leaves, shingles, linoleum, corrugated tin -- even ::

plywood with flattened beer-cans. Some walls were wood. Some had ::

windows. Some were made from old car-doors, with hand-cranked ::

handles to lower them in the day, then roll them up again at :: night

when the mosquitoes came out. Most of the settlers slept on :: nets.

:: :: A second wave had moved into the settlement, just as I arrived,

:: and rather than building out -- and farther away from their ::

neighbors' latrines, water-pump and mysterious sources of ::

electrical power -- they built *up*, on top of the existing ::

structures, shoring up the walls where necessary. It wasn't ::

hurricane proof, but neither are the cracker-box condos that ::

"property owners" occupy. They made contractual arrangements with ::

the dwellers of the first stories, paid them rent. A couple with ::

second-story rooms opposite one another in one of the narrow ::

"streets" consummated their relationship by building a sky-bridge ::

between their rooms, paying joint rent to two landlords. :: :: The

thing these motley houses had in common, all of them, was :: ingenuity

and pride of work. They had neat vegetable gardens, :: flower-boxes,

and fresh paint. They had kids' bikes leaned up :: against their

walls, and the smell of good cooking in the air. :: They were homely

homes. :: :: Many of the people who lived in these houses worked

regular :: service jobs, walking three miles to the nearest city bus

stop :: every morning and three miles back every evening. They sent ::

their kids to school, faking local addresses with PO boxes. Some ::

were retired. Some were just down on their luck. :: :: They helped

each other. When something precious was stolen, the :: community

pitched in to find the thieves. When one of them :: started a little

business selling sodas or sandwiches out of her :: shanty, the others

patronized her. When someone needed medical :: care, they chipped in

for a taxi to the free clinic, or someone :: with a working car drove

them. They were like the neighbors of :: the long-lamented American

town, an ideal of civic virtue that is :: so remote in our ancestry as

to have become mythical. There were :: eyes on the street here, proud

residents who knew what everyone :: was about and saw to it that bad

behavior was curbed before it :: could get started. :: :: Somehow, it

burned down. The fire department won't investigate, :: because this

was an illegal homestead, so they don't much care :: about how the

fire started. It took most of the homes, and most :: of their meager

possessions. The water got the rest. The fire :: department wouldn't

fight the fire at first, because someone at :: city hall said that the

land's owner wouldn't let them on the :: property. As it turns out,

the owner of that sad strip of land :: between an orange grove and the

side of a four-lane highway is :: unknown -- a decades-old dispute

over title has left it in legal :: limbo that let the squatters settle

there. It's suspicious all :: right -- various entities had tried to

evict the squatters :: before, but the legal hassles left them in

happy limbo. What the :: law couldn't accomplish, the fire did. :: ::

The story has a happy ending. The boys have moved the squatters ::

into their factory, and now they have "live-work" condos that :: look

like something Dr Seuss designed [photo gallery]. Like the :: Central

Park shantytown of the last century, these look like they :: were

"constructed by crazy poets and distributed by a whirlwind :: that had

been drinking," as a press account of the day had it. :: :: Last

year, the city completed a new housing project nearby to :: here, and

social workers descended on the shantytowners to get :: them to pick

up and move to these low-rent high-rises. The :: shantytowners

wouldn't go: "It was too expensive," said Mrs X, :: who doesn't want

her family back in Oklahoma to know she's :: squatting with her

husband and their young daughter. "We can't :: afford *any* rent, not

if we want to put food on the table on :: what we earn." :: :: She

made the right decision: the housing project is an urban :: renewal

nightmare, filled with crime and junkies, the kind of :: place where

little old ladies triple-chain their doors and order :: in groceries

that they pay for with direct debit, unwilling to :: keep any cash

around. :: :: The squatter village was a shantytown, but it was no

slum. It was :: a neighborhood that could be improved. And the boys

are doing :: that: having relocated the village to their grounds,

they're :: inventing and remixing new techniques for building cheap

and :: homey shelter fast. [profile: ten shanties and the technology

:: inside them]

The response was enormous and passionate. Dozens of readers wrote to

tell her that she'd been taken in by these crooks who had stolen the

land they squatted. She'd expected that -- she'd felt that way

herself, when she'd first walked past the shantytown.

But what surprised her more were the message-board posts and emails

from homeless people who'd been living in their cars, on the streets,

in squatted houses or in shanties. To read these, you'd think that

half her readership was sleeping rough and getting online at

libraries, Starbuckses, and stumbled wireless networks that they

accessed with antique laptops on street-corners.

"Kettlewell's coming down to see this," Perry said.

Her stomach lurched. She'd gotten the boys in trouble. "Is he mad?"

"I couldn't tell -- I got voicemail at three AM." Midnight in San

Jose, the hour at which Kettlewell got his mad impulses. "He'll be

here this afternoon."

"That jet makes it too easy for him to get around," she said, and

stretched out her back. Sitting at her desk all morning answering

emails and cleaning up some draft posts before blogging them had her

in knots. It was practically lunch-time.

"Perry," she began, then trailed off.

"It's all right," he said. "I know why you did it. Christ, we wouldn't

be where we are if you hadn't written about us. I'm in no position to

tell you to stop now." He swallowed. The month since the shantytowners

had moved in had put five years on him. His tan was fading, the

wrinkles around his eyes deeper, grey salting his stubbly beard and

short hair. "But you'll help me with Kettlewell, right?"

"I'll come along and write down what he says," she said. "That usually

helps."

#

:: Kodacell is supposed to be a new way of doing business. ::

Decentralized, net-savvy, really twenty-first century. The :: suck-up

tech press and tech-addled bloggers have been trumpeting :: its

triumph over all other modes of commerce. :: :: But what does

decentralization really mean? On her "blog" this :: week, former

journalist Suzanne Church reports that the inmates :: running the

flagship Kodacell asylum in suburban Florida have :: invited an entire

village of homeless squatters to take up :: residence at their factory

premises. :: :: Describing their illegal homesteading as "live-work"

condos that :: Dr Seuss might have designed, Kodacell shill Church

goes on to :: describe how this captive, live-in audience has been

converted to :: a workforce for Kodacell's most profitable unit ("most

:: profitable" is a relative term: to date, this unit has turned a ::

profit of about 1.5 million, per the last quarterly report; by ::

contrast the old Kodak's most profitable unit made twenty times ::

that in its last quarter of operation). :: :: America has a grand

tradition of this kind of indentured living: :: the coal-barons'

company towns of the 19th century are the :: original model for this

kind of industrial practice in the USA. :: Substandard housing and

only one employer in town -- that's the :: kind of brave new world

that Church's boyfriend Kettlewell has :: created. :: :: A reader

writes: "I live near the shantytown that was relocated :: to the

Kodacell factory in Florida. It was a dangerous slum full :: of drug

dealers. None of the parents in my neighborhood let their :: kids ride

their bikes along the road that passed it by -- it was :: a haven for

all kinds of down-and-out trash." :: :: There you have it, the future

of the American workforce: :: down-and-out junkie squatters working

for starvation wages.

"Kettlewell, you can't let jerks like Freddy run this company. He's

just looking to sell banner-space. This is how the Brit rags write --

it's all meanspirited sniping." Suzanne had never seen Kettlewell so

frustrated. His surfer good looks were fading fast -- he was getting a

little paunch on him and his cheeks were sagging off his bones into

the beginnings of jowls. His car had pulled up to the end of the

driveway and he'd gotten out and walked through the shantytown with

the air of a man in a dream. The truckers who pulled in and out all

week picking up orders had occasionally had a curious word at the odd

little settlement, but for Suzanne it had all but disappeared into her

normal experience. Kettlewell made it strange and even a little

outrageous, just by his stiff, outraged walk through its streets.

"You think I'm letting *Freddy* drive this decision?" He had spittle

flecks on the corners of his mouth. "Christ, Suzanne, you're supposed

to be the adult around here."

Perry looked up from the floor in front of him, which he had been

staring at intently. Suzanne caught his involuntary glare at

Kettlewell before he dropped his eyes again. Lester put a big meaty

paw on Perry's shoulder. Kettlewell was oblivious.

"Those people can't stay, all right? The shareholders are baying for

blood. The fucking liability -- Christ, what if one of those places

burns down? What if one of them knifes another one? We're on the hook

for everything they do. We could end up being on the hook for a

fucking *cholera epidemic*."

Irrationally, Suzanne burned with anger at Freddy. He had written

every venal, bilious word with the hope that it would result in a

scene just like this one. And not because he had any substantive

objection to what was going on: simply because he had a need to deride

that which others hailed. He wasn't afflicting the mighty, though: he

was taking on the very meekest, people who had *nothing*, including a

means of speaking up for themselves.

Perry looked up. "You've asked me to come up with something new and

incredible every three to six months. Well, this is new and

incredible. We've built a living lab on our doorstep for exploring an

enormous market opportunity to provide low-cost, sustainable

technology for use by a substantial segment of the population who have

no fixed address. There are millions of American squatters and

billions of squatters worldwide. They have money to spend and no one

else is trying to get it from them."

Kettlewell thrust his chin forward. "How many millions? How much money

do they have to spend? How do you know that any of this will make us a

single cent? Where's the market research? Was there any? Or did you

just invite a hundred hobos to pitch their tent out front of my

factory on the strength of your half-assed guesses?"

Lester held up a hand. "We don't have any market research, Kettlewell,

because we don't have a business-manager on the team anymore. Perry's

been taking that over as well as his regular work, and he's been

working himself sick for you. We're flying by the seat of our pants

here because you haven't sent us a pilot."

"You need an MBA to tell you not to turn your workplace into a slum?"

Kettlewell said. He was boiling. Suzanne very carefully pulled out her

pad and wrote this down. It was all she had, but sometimes it was

enough.

Kettlewell noticed. "Get out," he said. "I want to talk with these two

alone."

"No," Suzanne said. "That's not our deal. I get to document

everything. *That's* the deal."

Kettlewell glared at her, and then he deflated. He sagged and took two

steps to the chair behind Perry's desk and collapsed into it.

"Put the notebook away, Suzanne, please?"

She silently shook her head at him. He locked eyes with her for a

moment, then nodded curtly. She resumed writing.

"Guys, the major shareholders are going to start dumping their stock

this week. A couple of pension funds, a merchant bank. It's about ten,

fifteen percent of the company. When that happens, our ticker price is

going to fall by sixty percent or more."

"They're going to short us because they don't like what we've done

here?" Perry said. "Christ, that's ridiculous!"

Kettlewell sighed and put his face in his hands, scrubbed at his

eyes. "No, Perry, no. They're doing it because they can't figure out

how to value us. Our business units have an industry-high return on

investment, but there's not enough of them. We've only signed a

thousand teams and we wanted ten thousand, so ninety percent of the

money we had to spend is sitting in the bank at garbage interest

rates. We need to soak up that money with big projects -- the Hoover

Dam, Hong Kong Disneyland, the Big Dig. All we've got are little

projects."

"So it's not our fault then, is it?" Lester said. Perry was staring

out the window.

"No, it's not your fault, but this doesn't help. This is a disaster

waiting to turn into a catastrophe."

"Calm down, Landon," Perry said. "Calm down for a sec and listen to

me, OK?"

Kettlewell looked at him and sighed. "Go ahead."

"There are more than a billion squatters worldwide. San Francisco has

been giving out tents and shopping carts ever since they ran out of

shelter beds in the nineties. From Copenhagen to Capetown, there are

more and more people who are going off the grid, often in the middle

of cities."

Suzanne nodded. "They farm Detroit, in the ruins of old

buildings. Raise crops and sell them. Chickens, too. Even pigs."

"There's something there. These people have money, like I said. They

buy and sell in the stream of commerce. They often have to buy at a

premium because the services and goods available to them are limited

-- think of how a homeless person can't take advantage of

bulk-packaged perishables because she doesn't have a fridge. They are

the spirit of ingenuity, too -- they mod their cars, caves, anything

they can find to be living quarters. They turn RVs into permanent

homes. They know more about tents, sleeping bags and cardboard than

any UN SHELTER specialist. These people need housing, goods,

appliances, you name it. It's what Tjan used to call a green-field

market: no one else knows it's there. You want something you can spend

ungodly amounts of money on? This is it. Get every team in the company

to come up with products for these people. Soak up every cent they

spend. Better us providing them with quality goods at reasonable

prices than letting them get ripped off by the profiteers who have a

captive market. This plant is a living lab: this is the kind of market

intelligence you can't buy, right here. We should set up more of

these. Invite squatters all over the country to move onto our grounds,

test out our products, help us design, build and market them. We can

recruit traveling salespeople to go door to door in the shanties and

take orders. Shit, man, you talk about the Grameen Bank all the time

-- why not go into business providing these people with easy

microcredit without preying on them the way the banks do? Then we

could loan them money to buy things that we sell them that they use to

better their lives and earn more money so they can pay us back and buy

more things and borrow more money --"

Kettlewell held up a hand. "I like the theory. It's a nice story. But

I have to sell this to my Board, and they want more than stories:

where can I get the research to back this up?"

"We're it," Perry said. "This place, right here. There's no numbers to

prove what I'm saying is right because everyone who knows it's right

is too busy chasing after it and no one else believes it. But right

here, if we're allowed to do this -- right here we can prove it. We've

got the capital in our account, we're profitable, and we can roll

those profits back into more R&D for the future of the company."

Suzanne was writing so fast she was getting a hand cramp. Perry had

never given speeches like this, even a month before. Tjan's leaving

had hurt them all, but the growth it had precipitated in Perry was

stunning.

Kettlewell argued more, but Perry was a steamroller and Suzanne was

writing down what everyone said and that kept it all civil, like a

silent camera rolling in the corner of the room. No one looked at her,

but she was the thing they were conspicuously not looking at.

Francis took the news calmly. "Sound business strategy. Basically,

it's what I've been telling you to do all along, so I'm bound to like

it."

It took a couple weeks to hive off the Home Aware stuff to some of the

other Kodacell business-units. Perry flew a bunch, spending days in

Minnesota, Oregon, Ohio, and Michigan overseeing the retooling efforts

that would let him focus on his new project.

By the time he got back, Lester had retooled their own workspace,

converting it to four functional areas: communications, shelter, food

and entertainment. "They were Francis's idea," he said. Francis's

gimpy leg was bothering him more and more, but he'd overseen the work

from a rolling ergonomic office-chair. "It's his version of the

hierarchy of needs -- stuff he knows for sure we can sell."

It was the first time the boys had launched something new without

knowing what it was, where they'd started with a niche and decided to

fill it instead of starting with an idea and looking for a niche for

it.

"You're going to underestimate the research time," Francis said during

one of their flip-chart brainstorms, where they had been covering

sheet after sheet with ideas for products they could build. "Everyone

underestimates research time. Deciding what to make is always harder

than making it." He'd been drinking less since he'd gotten involved in

the retooling effort, waking earlier, bossing around his young-blood

posse to get him paper, bricks, Tinkertoys.

He was right. Suzanne steadily recorded the weeks ticking by as the

four competing labs focus-grouped, designed, tested and scrapped all

manner of "tchotchkes for tramps," as Freddy had dubbed it in a

spiraling series of ever-more-bilious columns. But the press was

mostly positive: camera crews liked to come by and shoot the

compound. One time, the pretty black reporter from the night of the

fire came by and said very nice things during her standup. Her name

was Maria and she was happy to talk shop with Suzanne, endlessly

fascinated by a "real" journalist who'd gone permanently slumming on

the Internet.

"The problem is that all this stuff is too specialized, it has too

many prerequisites," Perry said, staring at a waterproof,

cement-impregnated bag that could be filled with a hose, allowed to

dry, and used as a self-contained room. "This thing is great for

refugees, but it's too one-size-fits all for squatters. They have to

be able to heavily customize everything they use to fit into really

specialized niches."

More squatters had arrived to take up residence with them -- families,

friends, a couple of dodgy drifters -- and a third story was going

onto the buildings in the camp. They were even more Dr Seussian than

the first round, idiosyncratic structures that had to be built light

to avoid crushing the floors below them, hanging out over the narrow

streets, corkscrewing like vines seeking sun.

He kept staring, and would have been staring still had he not heard

the sirens. Three blue-and-white Broward County sheriff's cars were

racing down the access road into their dead mall, sirens howling,

lights blazing.

They screeched to a halt at the shantytown's edge and their doors flew

open. Four cops moved quickly into the shantytown, while two more

worked the radios, sheltering by the cars.

"Jesus Christ," Perry said. He ran for the door, but Suzanne grabbed

him.

"Don't run toward armed cops," she said. "Don't do anything that looks

threatening. Slow down, Perry."

He took a couple deep breaths. Then he looked around his lab for a

while, frantically muttering, "Where the fuck did I put it?"

"Use Home Aware," she said. He shook his head, grimaced, went to a

keyboard and typed MEGAPHONE. One of the lab-drawers started to throb

with a white glow.

He pulled out the megaphone and went to his window.

"ATTENTION POLICE," he said. "THIS IS THE LEASEHOLDER FOR THIS

PROPERTY. WHY ARE YOU RUNNING AROUND WITH YOUR GUNS DRAWN? WHAT IS

GOING ON?"

The police at the cars looked toward the workshop, then back to the

shantytown, then back to the workshop.

"SERIOUSLY. THIS IS NOT COOL. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?"

One of the cops grabbed the mic for his own loudhailer. "THIS IS THE

BROWARD COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT. WE HAVE RECEIVED INTELLIGENCE

THAT AN ARMED FUGITIVE IS ON THESE PREMISES. WE HAVE COME TO RETRIEVE

HIM."

"WELL, THAT'S WEIRD. NONE OF THE CHILDREN, CIVILIANS AND HARDWORKING

PEOPLE HERE ARE FUGITIVES AS FAR AS I KNOW. CERTAINLY THERE'S NO ONE

ARMED AROUND HERE. WHY DON'T YOU GET BACK IN YOUR CARS AND I'LL COME

OUT AND WE'LL RESOLVE THIS LIKE CIVILIZED PEOPLE, OK?"

The cop shook his head and reached for his mic again, and then there

were two gunshots, a scream, and a third.

Perry ran for the door and Suzanne chased after him, trying to stop

him. The cops at the cars were talking intently into their radios,

though it was impossible to know if they were talking to their

comrades in the shantytown or to their headquarters. Perry burst out

of the factory door and there was another shot and he spun around,

staggered back a step, and fell down like a sack of grain. There was

blood around his head. Suzanne stuck her hand in her mouth to stifle a

scream and stood helplessly in the doorway of the workshop, just a few

paces from Perry.

Lester came up behind her and firmly moved her aside. He lumbered

deliberately and slowly and fearlessly to Perry's side, knelt beside

him, touched him gently. His face was grey. Perry thrashed softly and

Suzanne let out a sound like a cry, then remembered herself and took

out her camera and began to shoot and shoot and shoot: the cops,

Lester with Perry like a tragic Pieta, the shantytowners running back

and forth screaming. Snap of the cops getting out of their cars, guns

in hands, snap of them fanning out around the shantytown, snap of them

coming closer and closer, snap of a cop pointing his gun at Lester,

ordering him away from Perry, snap of a cop approaching her.

"It's live," she said, not looking up from the viewfinder. "Going out

live to my blog. Daily readership half a million. They're watching you

now, every move. Do you understand?"

The officer said, "Put the camera down, ma'am."

She held the camera. "I can't quote the First Amendment from memory,

not exactly, but I know it well enough that I'm not moving this

camera. It's live, you understand -- every move is going out live,

right now."

The officer stepped back, turned his head, muttered in his mic.

"There's an ambulance coming," he said. "Your friend was shot with a

nonlethal rubber bullet."

"He's bleeding from the head," Lester said. "From the eye."

Suzanne shuddered.

Ambulance sirens in the distance. Lester stroked Perry's hair. Suzanne

took a step back and panned it over Perry's ruined face, bloody and

swollen. The rubber bullet must have taken him either right in the eye

or just over it.

"Perry Mason Gibbons was unarmed and posed no threat to Sheriff's

Deputy Badge Number 5724 --" she zoomed in on it -- "when he was shot

with a rubber bullet in the eye. He is unconscious and bloody on the

ground in front of the workshop where he has worked quietly and

unassumingly to invent and manufacture new technologies."

The cop knew when to cut his losses. He turned aside and walked back

into the shantytown, leaving Suzanne to turn her camera on Perry, on

the EMTs who evacced him to the ambulance, on the three injured

shantytowners who were on the ambulance with him, on the corpse they

wheeled out on his own gurney, one of the newcomers to the shantytown,

a man she didn't recognize.

They operated on Perry all that night, gingerly tweezing fragments of

bone from his shattered left orbit out of his eye and face. Some had

floated to the back of the socket and posed a special risk of brain

damage, the doctor explained into her camera.

Lester was a rock, sitting silently in the waiting room, talking

calmly and firmly with the cops and over the phone to Kettlewell and

the specially impaneled board-room full of Kodacell lawyers who wanted

to micromanage this. Rat-Toothed Freddy filed a column in which he

called her a "grandstanding bint," and accused Kodacell of harboring

dangerous fugitives. He'd dug up the fact that one of the newcomers to

the shantytown -- not the one they'd killed, that was a bystander --

was wanted for holding up a liquor-store with a corkscrew the year

before.

Lester unscrewed his earphone and scrubbed at his eyes. Impulsively,

she leaned over and gave him a hug. He stiffened up at first but then

relaxed and enfolded her in his huge, warm arms. She could barely make

her arms meet around his broad, soft back -- it was like hugging a

giant loaf of bread. She squeezed tighter and he did too. He was a

good hugger.

"You holding in there, kiddo?" she said.

"Yeah," he murmured into her neck. "No." He squeezed tighter. "As well

as I need to, anyway."

The doctor pried them apart to tell them that the EEG and fMRI were

both negative for any brain-damage, and that they'd managed to salvage

the eye, probably. Kodacell was springing for all the care he needed,

cash money, no dorking around with the fucking HMO, so the doctors had

put him through every machine on the premises in a series of

farcically expensive tests.

"I hope they sue the cops for the costs," the doctor said. She was

Pakistani or Bangladeshi, with a faint accent, and very pretty even

with the dark circles under her eyes. "I read your columns," she said,

shaking Suzanne's hand. "I admire the work you do," she said, shaking

Lester's hand. "I was born in Delhi. We were squatters who were given

a deed to our home and then evicted because we couldn't pay the

taxes. We had to build again, in the rains, outside of the city, and

then again when we were evicted again."

She had two brothers who were working for startups like Kodacell's,

but run by other firms: one was backed by McDonald's, the other by the

AFL-CIO's investment arm. Suzanne did a little interview with her

about her brothers' projects -- a bike-helmet that had been

algorithmically evolved for minimum weight and maximum protection; a

smart skylight that deformed itself to follow light based on simple

phototropic controllers. The brother working on bike-helmets was

riding a tiger and could barely keep up with orders; he was consuming

about half of the operational capacity of the McDonald's network and

climbing fast.

Lester joined in, digging on the details. He'd been following the

skylights in blogs and on a list or two, and he'd heard of the

doctor's brother, which really tweaked her, she was visibly proud of

her family.

"But your work is most important. Things for the homeless. We get them

in here sometimes, hurt, off the ambulances. We usually turn them away

again. The ones who sell off the highway medians and at the traffic

lights." Suzanne had seen them, selling homemade cookies, oranges,

flowers, newspapers, plasticky toys, sad or beautiful handicrafts. She

had a carved coconut covered in intricate scrimshaw that she'd bought

from a little girl who was all skin and bones except for her

malnourished pot-belly.

"They get hit by cars?"

"Yes," the doctor said. "Deliberately, too. Or beaten up."

Perry was moved out of the operating theater to a recovery room and

then to a private room and by then they were ready to collapse, though

there was so much email in response to her posts that she ended up

pounding on her computer's keyboard all the way home as Lester drove

them, squeezing the bridge of his nose to stay awake. She didn't even

take her clothes off before collapsing into bed.

#

"They need the tools to make any other tools," is what Perry said when

he returned from the hospital, the side of his head still swaddled in

bandages that draped over his injured eye. They'd shaved his head at

his insistence, saying that he wasn't going to try to keep his hair

clean with all the bandages. It made him look younger, and his fine

skull-bones stood out through his thin scalp when he finally came

home. Before he'd looked like a outdoorsman engineer: now he looked

like a radical, a pirate.

"They need the tools that will let them build anything else, for free,

and use it or sell it." He gestured at the rapid prototyping machines

they had, the three-d printer and scanner setups. "I mean something

like that, but I want it to be capable of printing out the parts

necessary to assemble another one. Machines that can reproduce

themselves."

Francis shifted in his seat. "What are they supposed to do with

those?"

"Everything," Perry said, his eye glinting. "Make your kitchen

fixtures. Make your shoes and hat. Make your kids' toys -- if it's in

the stores, it should be a downloadable too. Make toolchests and

tools. Make it and build it and sell it. Make other printers and sell

them. Make machines that make the goop we feed into the

printers. Teach a man to fish, Francis, teach a man to fucking

*fish*. No top-down 'solutions' driven by 'market research'" -- his

finger-quotes oozed sarcasm -- "the thing that we need to do is make

these people the authors of their own destiny."

They put up the sign that night: AUTHOR OF YOUR OWN DESTINY, hung over

the workshop door. Suzanne trailed after Perry transcribing the rants

that spilled out of his mouth as he explained it to Lester and

Francis, and then to Kettlewell when he called, and then to the pretty

young black lady from the TV who by now had figured out that there was

a real story in her backyard, then to an NPR man on the phone, and

then to a CNN crew who drove in from Miami and filmed the shantytown

and the workshop like Japanese tourists at Disney World, never having

ventured into the skanky, failed strip-mall suburbs just outside of

town.

Francis had a protege who had a real dab touch with the 3-D

printers. The manufacturer, Lester's former employer, had been out of

business for two years by then, so all the service on the machines had

to be done on the premises. Francis's protege -- the one who claimed

his mother had pushed his father under a bus, his name was Jason --

watched Lester work on recalcitrant machines silently for a couple

days, then started to hand him the tool he needed next without having

to be asked. Then he diagnosed a problem that had stumped Lester all

morning. Then he suggested an improvement to the feedstock pump that

increased the mean time between failures by a couple hours.

"No, man, no, not like that," Jason said to one of the small gang of

boys he was bossing. "Gently, or you'll snap it off." The boy snapped

it off and Jason pulled another replacement part out of a tub and

said, "See, like *this*," and snapped it on. The small gang of boys

regarded him with something like awe.

"How come no girls?" Suzanne said as she interviewed him while he took

a smoke-break. Perry had banned cigarettes from all indoor workshops,

nominally to keep flames away from the various industrial chemicals

and such, but really just to encourage the shantytowners to give up

the habit that they couldn't afford anyway. He'd also leaned on the

shantytowners who'd opened up small shops in their houses to keep cigs

out of the town, without a lot of success.

"Girls aren't interested in this stuff, lady."

"You think?" There was a time when she would have objected, but it was

better to let these guys say it out loud, hear themselves say it.

"No. Maybe where you come from, OK? Don't know. But here girls are

different. They do good in school but when they have babies they're

done. I mean, hey, it's not like I don't *want* girls in the team,

they'd be great. I love girls. They fuckin' *work*, you know. No

bullshit, no screwing around. But I know every girl in this place and

none of 'em are even interested, OK?"

Suzanne cocked one eyebrow just a little and Jason shifted

uncomfortably. He scratched his bare midriff and shuffled. "I do, all

of them. Why would they? One girl, a roomful of boys, it'd be

gross. They'd act like jerks. There's no way we'd get anything done."

Suzanne lifted her eyebrow one hair higher. He squirmed harder.

"So all right, that's not their fault. But I got enough work, all

right? Too much to do without spending time on that. It's not like any

girls have *asked* to join up. I'm not keeping them out."

Suzanne jotted a couple of notes, keeping perfectly mum.

"Well, I'd like to have them in the workshop, OK? Maybe I should ask

some of them if they'd come. Shit, if I can teach these apes, I can

teach a girl. They're smart. Girls'd make this place a little better

to work in. Lots of them trying to support their families, so they

need the money, too."

There was a girl there by the afternoon. The next day, there were two

more. They seemed like quick studies, despite their youth and their

lip-gloss. Suzanne approved.

#

Lester stayed long enough to see the first prototype printer-printers

running, then he lit out with a duffel bag jammed into the back of his

modded Smart car. "Where are you going?" Suzanne said as Perry looked

on gloomily. "I'll come and visit you. I want to follow your story."

Truth be told, she was sorry to see him go, very sorry. He was such a

rock, such an anchor for Perry's new crazy pirate energy and for the

madness around them. He hadn't given much notice (not to her -- Perry

didn't seem that surprised).

"I can't really talk about it," he said. "Nondisclosure."

"So it's a new job," she said. "You're going to work for Tjan?" Tjan's

Westinghouse operation was fully rocking. He had fifty teams up the

eastern seaboard, ten in the midwest and was rumored to have twice as

many in Eastern Europe.

He grinned. "Oh, Suzanne, don't try to journalist me." He reached out

and hugged her in a cloud of her father's cologne. "You're fantastic,

you know that? No, I'm not going to a job. It's a thing that's an

amazing opportunity, you know?"

She didn't, but then he was gone and boy did she miss him.

Perry and she went out for dinner in Miami the next night with a PhD

candidate from Pepperdine's B-school, eating at the same deco patio

that she'd dined at with Tjan. Perry wore a white shirt open to reveal

his tangle of wiry chest hair and the waitress couldn't keep her eyes

off of him. He had a permanent squint now, and a scar that made his

eyebrow into a series of small hills.

"I was just in Greensboro, Miss," the PhD candidate said. He was in

his mid-twenties, young and slick, his only nod to academe a small

goatee. "I used to spend summers there with my grandpa." He talked

fast, flecks of spittle in the corners of his mouth, eyes wide, fork

stabbing blindly at the bits of crab-cake on his plate. "There wasn't

*anything* left there, just a couple gas-stations and a 7-Eleven,

shit, they'd even closed the Wal-Mart. But now, but now, it's *alive*

again, it's buzzing and hopping. Every empty storefront is full of

people playing and tinkering, just a little bit of money in their

pockets from a bank or a company or a fund. They're doing the dumbest

things, mind you: tooled-leather laptop cases, switchblade knives with

thumb drives in the handles, singing and dancing lawn-Santas that

yodel like hillbillies."

"I'd buy a tooled-leather laptop case," Perry said, swilling a sweaty

bottle of beer. He waggled his funny eyebrow and rubbed his fuzzy

scalp.

"The rate of employment is something like ninety-five percent, which

it hasn't been in like a hundred years. If you're not inventing stuff,

you're keeping the books for someone who is, or making sandwiches for

them, or driving delivery vehicles around. It's like a tiny,

distributed gold rush."

"Or like the New Deal," Suzanne said. That was how she'd come to

invite him down, after she'd read his paper coining the term New Work

to describe what Perry was up to, comparing it to Roosevelt's

public-investment plan that spent America free of the Depression.

"Yeah, exactly, exactly! I've got research that shows that one in five

Americans is employed in the New Work industry. Twenty percent!"

Perry's lazy eye opened a little wider. "No way," he said.

"Way," the PhD candidate said. He finished his caipirinha and shook

the crushed ice at a passing waiter, who nodded and ambled to the bar

to get him a fresh one. "You should get on the road and write about

some of these guys," he said to Suzanne. "They need some ink, some

phosphors. They're pulling up stakes and moving to the small towns

their parents came from, or to abandoned suburbs, and just *doing

it*. Bravest fucking thing you've seen in your life."

The PhD candidate stayed out the week, and went home with a suitcase

full of the parts necessary to build a three-d printer that could

print out all of the parts necessary to build a three-d printer.

Lester emailed her from wherever it was he'd gone, and told her about

the lovely time he was having. It made her miss him sharply. Perry was

hardly ever around for her now, buried in his work, buried with the

kids from the shantytown and with Francis. She looked over her last

month's blogs and realized that she'd been turning in variations on

the same theme for all that time. She knew it was time to pack a

duffel bag of her own and go see the bravest fucking thing she'd seen

in her life.

"Bye, Perry," she said, stopping by his workbench. He looked up at her

and saw the bag and his funny eyebrow wobbled.

"Leaving for good?" he said. He sounded unexpectedly bitter.

"No!" she said. "No! Just a couple weeks. Going to get the rest of the

story. But I'll be back, count on it."

He grunted and slumped. He was looking a lot older now, and beaten

down. His hair, growing out, was half grey, and he'd gotten gaunt, his

cheekbones and forehead springing out of his face. On impulse, she

gave him a hug like the ones she'd shared with Lester. He returned it

woodenly at first, then with genuine warmth. "I will be back, you

know," she said. "You've got plenty to do here, anyway."

"Yeah," he said. "Course I do."

She kissed him firmly on the cheek and stepped out the door and into

her car and drove to Miami International.

#

Tjan met her at Logan and took her bag. "I'm surprised you had the

time to meet me," she said. The months had been good to him, slimming

down his pot-belly and putting a twinkle in his eye.

"I've got a good organization," he said, as they motored away toward

Rhode Island, through strip-mall suburbs and past boarded-up chain

restaurants. Everywhere there were signs of industry: workshops in old

storefronts, roadside stands selling disposable music players, digital

whoopee cushions, and so forth. "I barely have to put in an

appearance."

Tjan yawned hugely and constantly. "Jet-lag," he apologized. "Got back

from Russia a couple days ago."

"Did you see your kids?" she said. "How's business there?"

"I saw my kids," he said, and grinned. "They're amazing, you know

that? Good kids, unbelievably smart. Real little operators. The older

one, Lyenitchka, is running a baby-sitting service -- not baby-sitting

herself, you see, but recruiting other kids to do the sitting for her

while she skims a management fee and runs the quality control."

"She's your daughter all right," she said. "So tell me everything

about the Westinghouse projects."

She'd been following them, of course, lots of different little

startups, each with its own blogs and such. But Tjan was quite

fearless about taking her through their profits and losses and taking

notes on it all kept her busy until she reached her hotel. Tjan

dropped her off and promised to pick her up the next morning for a VIP

tour of the best of his teams, and she went to check in.

She was in the middle of receiving her key when someone grabbed her

shoulder and squeezed it. "Suzanne bloody Church! What are you doing

here, love?"

The smell of his breath was like a dead thing, left to fester. She

turned around slowly, not wanting to believe that of all the hotels in

rural Rhode Island, she ended up checking into the same one as

Rat-Toothed Freddy.

"Hey, Freddy," she said. Seeing him gave her an atavistic urge to stab

him repeatedly in the throat with the hotel stick-pen. He was

unshaven, his gawky Adam's apple bobbing up and down, and he swallowed

and smiled wetly. "Nice to see you."

"Fantastic to see you, too! I'm here covering a shareholder meeting

for Westinghouse, is that what you're here for, too?"

"No," she said. She knew the meeting was on that week, but hadn't

planned on attending it. She was done with press conferences,

preferring on-the-ground reporting. "Well, nice to see you."

"Oh, do stay for a drink," he said, grinning more widely, exposing

those grey teeth in a shark's smile. "Come on -- they have a free

cocktail hour in this place. I'll have to report you to the

journalist's union if you turn down a free drink."

"I don't think 'bloggers' have to worry about the journalist's union,"

she said, making sarcastic finger-quotes in case he didn't get the

message. He still didn't. He laughed instead.

"Oh, love, I'm sure they'll still have you even if you have lapsed

away from the one true faith."

"Good night, Freddy," was all she could manage to get out without

actually hissing through her teeth.

"OK, good night," he said, moving in to give her a hug. As he loomed

toward her, she snapped.

"Freeze, mister. You are not my friend. I do not want to touch

you. You have poor personal hygiene and your breath smells like an

overflowing camp-toilet. You write vicious personal attacks on me and

on the people I care about. You are unfair, meanspirited, and you

write badly. The only day I wouldn't piss on you, Freddy, is the day

you were on fire. Now get the fuck out of my way before I kick your

tiny little testicles up through the roof of your reeking mouth."

She said it quietly, but the desk-clerks behind her overheard it

anyway and giggled. Freddy's smile only wobbled, but then returned,

broader than ever.

"Well said," he said and gave her a single golf-clap. "Sleep well,

Suzanne."

She boiled all the way to her room and when she came over hungry, she

ordered in room service, not wanting to take the chance that

Rat-Toothed Freddy would still be in the lobby.

#

Tjan met her as she was finishing her coffee in the breakfast

room. She hadn't seen Freddy yet.

"I've got five projects slated for you to visit today," Tjan said,

sliding into the booth beside her. Funnily now that he was in the cold

northeast, he was dressing like a Floridian in blue jeans and a

Hawai'ian barkcloth shirt with a bright spatter of pineapples and

Oscar Mayer Wienermobiles. Back in Florida, he'd favored unflattering

nylon slacks and white shirts with ironed collars.

The projects were fascinating and familiar. The cultural differences

that distinguished New England New Work from Florida New Work were

small but telling: a lot more woodcraft, in a part of the country

where many people had grown up in their grandfathers' woodworking

shops. A little more unreflexive kitsch, like the homely kittens and

puppies that marched around the reactive, waterproof, smash-proof

screens integrated into a bio-monitoring crib.

At the fourth site, she was ambushed by a flying hug. Tjan laughed as

she nearly went down under the weight of a strong, young woman who

flung her arms around Suzanne's neck. "Holy *crap* it's good to see

you!"

Suzanne untangled herself and got a look at her hugger. She had short

mousy hair, twinkling blue eyes, and was dressed in overalls and a

pretty flowered blouse, scuffed work boots and stained and torn

work-gloves. "Uh..." she said, then it clicked. "Fiona?"

"Yeah! Didn't Tjan tell you I was here?" The last time she'd seen this

woman, she was weeping over pizza and getting ready to give up on

life. Now she was practically vibrating.

"Uh, no," she said, shooting a look at Tjan, who was smiling like the

Buddha and pretending to inspect a pair of shoes with gyroscopically

stabilized retractable wheels in the heels.

"I've been here for months! I went back to Oregon, like you told me

to, and then I saw a recruiting ad for Westinghouse and I sent them my

CV and then I got a videoconference interview and then, bam, I was on

an airplane to Rhode Island!"

Suzanne blinked. *I* told you to go back to Oregon? Well, maybe she

had. That was a lifetime ago.

The workshop was another dead mall, this one a horseshoe of

storefronts separated by flimsy gyprock. The Westinghousers had cut

through the walls with drywall knives to join all the stores

together. The air was permeated with the familiar

Saran-Wrap-in-a-microwave tang of three-d printers. The parking lot

was given over to some larger apparatus and a fantastical children's

jungle-gym in the shape of a baroque, spired pirate fortress, with

elegantly curved turrets, corkscrew sky-bridges, and flying buttresses

crusted over with ornate, grotesque gargoyles. Children swarmed over

it like ants, screeching with pleasure.

"Well, you're looking really good, Fiona," Suzanne said. *Still not

great with people*, she thought. Fiona, though, was indeed looking

good, and beaming. She wasn't wearing the crust of cosmetics and

hair-care products she'd affected in the corporate Silicon Valley

world. She glowed pink.

"Suzanne," Fiona said, getting serious now, taking her by the

shoulders and looking into her eyes. "I can't thank you enough for

this. This has saved my life. It gave me something to live for. For

the first time in my life, I am doing something I'm proud of. I go to

bed every night thankful and happy that I ended up here. Thank you,

Suzanne. Thank you."

Suzanne tried not to squirm. Fiona gave her another long hug. "It's

all your doing," Suzanne said at last. "I just told you about

it. You've made this happen for you, OK?"

"OK," Fiona said, "but I still wouldn't be here if it wasn't for

you. I love you, Suzanne."

Ick. Suzanne gave her another perfunctory hug and got the hell out of

Dodge.

#

"What's with the jungle-gym?" It really had been something, fun and

Martian-looking.

"That's the big one," Tjan said with a big grin. "Most people don't

even notice it, they think it's daycare or something. Well, that's how

it started out, but then some of the sensor people started noodling

with jungle-gym components that could tell how often they were played

with. They started modding the gym every night, adding variations on

the elements that saw the most action, removing the duds. Then the CAD

people added an algorithm that would take the sensor data and generate

random variations on the same basis. Finally, some of the robotics

people got in on the act so that the best of the computer-evolved

designs could be instantiated automatically: now it's a self-modifying

jungle-gym. The kids love it. It is the crack cocaine of jungle-gyms,

though we won't be using that in the marketing copy, of course."

"Of course," Suzanne said drily. She'd automatically reached for her

notepad and started writing when Tjan started talking. Now, reviewing

her notes, she knew that she was going to have to go back and get some

photos of this. She asked Tjan about it.

"The robots go all night, you know. Not much sleep if you do that."

No going back to the hotel to see Freddy, what a pity. "I'll grab a

couple blankets from the hotel to keep warm," she said.

"Oh, you needn't," he said. "That crew has a set of bleachers with

gas-heaters for the night crew and their family to watch from. It's

pretty gorgeous, if you ask me."

They had a hasty supper of burgers at a drive-through and then went

back to the jungle-gym project. Suzanne ensconced herself at someone's

vacated desk for a couple hours and caught up on email before finally

emerging as the sun was dipping swollen and red behind the mall. She

set herself up on the bleachers, and Fiona found her with a thermos of

coffee and a flask of whisky. They snuggled under a blanket amid a

small crowd of geeks, an outdoor slumber party under the gas-heaters'

roar.

Gradually, the robots made an appearance. Most of them humped along

like inchworms, carrying chunks of new playground apparatus in coils

of their long bodies. Some deployed manipulator arms, though they

didn't have much by way of hands at their ends. "We just use

rare-earth magnets," Fiona said. "Less fiddly than trying to get

artificial vision that can accurately grasp the bars."

Tjan nudged her and pointed to a new tower that was going up. The

robots were twisting around themselves to form a scaffold, while

various of their number crawled higher and higher, snapping modular

pieces of high-impact plastic together with *snick* sounds that were

audible over the whine of their motors.

Suzanne switched on her camera's night-vision mode and got

shooting. "Where did you get all these robots?"

Tjan grinned. "It's an open design -- the EPA hired Westinghouse to

build these to work on sensing and removing volatile organic compounds

on Superfund sites. Because we did the work for the government, we had

to agree not to claim any design copyright or patents in the

outcome. There's a freaking warehouse full of this stuff at

Westinghouse, all kinds of crazy things that Westinghouse abandoned

because they weren't proprietary enough and they were worried that

they'd have to compete on the open market if they tried to productize

them. Suits us just fine, though."

The field was aswarm with glinting metal inchworm robots now, shifting

back and forth, boiling and roiling and picking up enormous chunks of

climber like cartoon ants carrying away a picnic basket. The

playground was being transformed before her eyes, in ways gross and

subtle, and it was enchanting to watch.

"Can I go out and have a look?" she said. "I mean, is it safe?"

"Sure," Fiona said. "Of course! Our robots won't harm you; they just

nuzzle you and then change direction."

"Still, try to stay out of their way," Tjan said. "Some of that stuff

they're moving around is heavy."

So she waded out onto the playground and carefully picked her way

through the robot swarm. Some crawled over her toes. A couple twined

between her feet and nearly tripped her up and once she stepped on one

and it went still and waited politely for her to step off.

Once in the thick of it all, she switched on her video and began to

record through the night filter. Standing there amid the whirl and

racket and undulating motion of the jungle gym as it reconfigured

itself, she felt like she'd arrived at some posthuman future where the

world no longer needed her or her kind. Like humanity's creations had

evolved past their inventors.

She was going to have to do a *lot* of writing before bed.

Freddy was checking out in the lobby when Tjan dropped her off at

5AM. It was impossible to sneak past him, and he gave her a nasty,

bucktoothed smile as she passed by him. It distracted her and made the

writing come more slowly, but she was a pro and her readers had sent

in a lot of kind mail, and there was one from Lester, still away on

his mysterious errand but sounding happier than he had in months,

positively giddy.

She set the alarm-clock so that she could be awake for her next stop,

outside of North Carolina's Research Triangle, where some local

millionaires had backed a dozen New Work teams.

Another three weeks of this stuff and she'd get to go home --

Florida. The condo was home now, and the junkyard. Hot and sticky and

inventive and ever-changing. She fell asleep thinking of it and

smiling.

It was two weeks more before Lester caught up with her, in Detroit of

all places. Going back to the old place hadn't been her idea, she'd

been dragged back by impassioned pleas from the local Ford and GM New

Work teams, who were second-generation-unemployed, old rust-belt

families who'd rebooted with money from the companies that had wrung

their profit from their ancestors and abandoned them.

The big focus in the rustbelt was eradicating the car. Some were

building robots that could decommission leaky gas-stations and crater

out the toxic soil. Some were building car-disassembly plants that

reclaimed materials from the old beasts' interiors. Between the Ford

and GM teams with their latest bail-out and those funded by the UAW

out of the settlements they'd won from the auto-makers, Detroit was

springing up anew.

Lester emailed her and said that he'd seen on her blog that she was

headed to Detroit, and did she want to meet him for dinner, being as

he'd be in town too?

They ate at Devil's Night, a restaurant in one of the reclaimed

mansions in Brush Park, a neighborhood of wood-frame buildings that

teenagers had all but burned to the ground over several decades' worth

of Halloweens. In Detroit, Devil's Night was the pre-Halloween

tradition of torching abandoned buildings, and all of Brush Park had

been abandoned for years, its handsome houses attractive targets for

midnight firebugs.

Reclaiming these buildings was an artisanal practice of urethaning the

charred wood and adding clever putty, cement, and glass to preserve

the look of a burned out hulk while restoring structural

integrity. One entire floor of the restaurant was missing, having been

replaced by polished tempered one-way glass that let upstairs diners

look down on the bald spots and cleavage of those eating below.

Suzanne showed up a few minutes late, having gotten lost wandering the

streets of a Detroit that had rewritten its map in the decades since

she'd left. She was flustered, and not just because she was running

late. There was a lingering awkwardness between her and Lester and her

elation at seeing him again had an inescapable undercurrent of dread.

When the waiter pointed out her table, she told him he was

mistaken. Lester wasn't there, some stranger was: short-haired, burly,

with a few days' stubble. He wore a smart blazer and a loose striped

cotton shirt underneath. He was beaming at her.

"Suzanne," he said.

Her jaw literally dropped. She realized she was standing with her

mouth open and shut it with a snap. "Lester?" she said, wonderingly.

He got up, still smiling, even laughing a little, and gave her a

hug. It was Lester all right. That smell was unmistakable, and those

big, warm paws he called hands.

When he let go of her, he laughed again. "Oh, Suzanne, I could *not*

have asked for any better reaction than this. *Thank you*." They were

drawing stares. Dazedly, she sat down. So did he.

"Lester?" she said again.

"Yes, it's me," he said. "I'll tell you about it over dinner. The

waiter wants to take our drink orders."

Theatrically, she ordered a double Scotch. The waiter rattled off the

specials and Suzanne picked one at random. So did Lester.

"So," he said, patting his washboard tummy. "You want to know how I

got to this in ten weeks, huh?"

"Can I take notes?" Suzanne said, pulling out her pad.

"Oh by all means," he said. "I got a discount on my treatments on the

basis that you would end up taking notes."

The clinic was in St Petersburg, Russia, in a neighborhood filled with

Russian dentists who catered to American health tourists who didn't

want to pay US prices for crowns. The treatment hadn't originated

there: The electromuscular stimulation and chemical therapy for

skin-tightening was standard for rich new mothers in Hollywood who

wanted to get rid of pregnancy bellies. The appetite-suppressing

hormones had been used in the Mexican pharma industry for

years. Stem-cells had been an effective substitute for steroids when

it came to building muscle in professional athletic circles the world

round. Genomic therapy using genes cribbed from hummingbirds boosted

metabolism so that the body burned 10,000 calories a day sitting

still.

But the St Petersburg clinic had ripped, mixed and burned these

different procedures to make a single, holistic treatment that had

dropped Lester from 400 to 175 pounds in ten weeks.

"Is that safe?" she said.

"Everyone asks that," he said, laughing. "Yeah, it's safe if they're

monitoring you and standing by with lots of diagnostic equipment. But

if you're willing to take slower losses, you can go on a way less

intensive regime that won't require supervision. This stuff is the

next big grey-market pharma gold. They're violating all kinds of

pharma patents, of course, but that's what Cuba and Canada are for,

right? Inside of a year, every fat person in America is going to have

a bottle of pills in his pocket, and inside of two years, there won't

be any fat people."

She shook her head. "You look... Lester, you look *incredible*. I'm so

proud of you."

He ducked his head. He really did look amazing. Dropping the weight

had taken off ten years, and between that and the haircut and the new

clothes, he was practically unrecognizable.

"Does Perry know?"

"Yeah," Lester said. "I talked it over with him before I opted for

it. Tjan had mentioned it in passing, it was a business his ex-wife

was tangled up with through her mafiyeh connections, and once I had

researched it online and talked to some people who'd had the

treatment, including a couple MDs, I decided to just do it."

It had cost nearly everything he'd made from Kodacell, but it was a

small price to pay. He insisted on getting dinner.

Afterward, they strolled through the fragrant evening down Woodward

Avenue, past the deco skyscrapers and the plowed fields and community

gardens, their livestock pens making soft animal noises.

"It's wonderful to see you again, Lester," she said truthfully. She'd

really missed him, even though his participation on her message boards

had hardly let up (though it had started coming in at weird hours,

something explained by the fact that he'd been in Russia). Walking

alongside of him, smelling his smell, seeing him only out of the

corner of her eye, it was like nothing had changed.

"It's great to see you again too." Tentatively, he took her hand in

his big paw. His hand was warm but not sweaty, and she realized it had

been a long time since anyone had held her hand. Heart pounding, she

gave his hand a squeeze.

Their conversation and their walk rambled on, with no outward

acknowledgment of the contact of hand on hand, but her hand squeezed

his softly now and again, or he squeezed hers, and then they were at

her hotel. *How did that happen?* she asked herself.

But then they were having a nightcap, and then he was in the elevator

with her and then he was at the door of her room, and the blood was

roaring in her ears as she stuck her credit-card in the reader to open

it.

*Wait*, she tried to say. *Lester, hang on a second,* is what she

tried to say, but her tongue was thick in her mouth. He stepped

through the door with her, then said, "Uh, I need to use the

bathroom."

With relief, she directed him to the small water closet. The room was

basic -- now that she was her own boss, she wasn't springing for

Crowne Plazas and Hiltons, this was practically a coffin -- and there

was nowhere to sit except the bed. Her laptop was open and there was a

lot of email in her inbox, but for once, she didn't care. She was

keenly attuned to the water noises coming from behind the door, each

new sound making her jump a little. What was he doing in there,

inserting a fucking diaphragm?

She heard him work the latch on the door and she put on her best

smile. Her stomach was full of butterflies. He smiled back and sat

down on the bed next to her, taking her hand again. His hand was moist

from being washed, and a little slippery. She didn't mind. Wordlessly,

she put her head on his barrel chest. His heart was racing, and so was

hers.

Gradually, they leaned back, until they were side by side on the bed,

her head still on his chest. Moving like she was in a dream, she

lifted her head from his chest and stared into his eyes. They were

wide and scared. She kissed him, softly. His lips were trembling and

unyielding. She kissed him more insistently, running her hands over

his chest and shoulders, putting one leg over him. He closed his eyes

and kissed her back. He wasn't bad, but he was scared or nervous and

all jittery.

She kissed his throat, breathing in the smell, savoring the rough

texture of his three-day beard. Tentatively, he put his hands on her

back, stroked her, worked gradually towards her bottom. Then he

stopped.

"What's wrong?" she said, propping herself up on her forearms, still

straddling him.

She saw that there were tears in his eyes.

"Lester? What's wrong?"

He opened his mouth and then shut it. Tears slid off his face into his

ears. She blotted them with a corner of hotel-pillow.

She stroked his hair. "Lester?"

He gave out a choked sob and pushed her away. He sat up and put his

face in his hands. His back heaved. She stroked his shoulders

tentatively.

Finally, he seemed to get himself under control. He sniffled.

"I have to go," he said.

"Lester, what's *wrong*?"

"I can't do this," he said. "I..."

"Just tell me," she said. "Whatever it is, tell me."

"You didn't want me before." He said it simply without accusation, but

it stung like he'd slapped her in the face.

"Oh, Lester," she said, moving to hug him, but he pushed her away.

"I have to go," he said, drawing himself up to his full height. He was

tall, though he'd never seemed it before, but oh, he was tall, six

foot four or taller. He filled the room. His eyes were red and

swollen, but he put on a smile for her. "Thanks, Suzanne. It was

really good to see you again. I'll see you in Florida."

She stood up and moved quickly to him, stood on tiptoe to put her arms

around his neck and hug him fiercely. He hugged her back and she

kissed him on the cheek.

"I'll see you in Florida," she said.

And then he was gone. She sat on the edge of her bed and waited for

tears, but they didn't come. So she picked up her laptop and started

to work through her mountain of email.

#

When she saw him again, he was coming down the drive leading to the

shantytown and the factory. She was having tea in the tea-room that

had opened in a corkscrew spire high above the rest of the

shantytown. The lady who operated it called herself Mrs Torrence, and

she was exquisitely antique but by no means frail, and when she worked

the ropes on her dumbwaiter to bring up supplies from the loading area

on the ground, her biceps stood at attention like Popeye's. There was

a rumor that Mrs Torrence used to be a man, or still was, under her

skirts, but Suzanne didn't pay attention to it.

Lester came down the drive grinning and bouncing on the balls of his

feet. Perry had evidently been expecting him, for he came racing

through the shantytown and pelted down the roadway and threw himself

at Lester, grabbing him in a crazy, exuberant, whooping hug. Francis

gimped out a moment later and gave him a solemn handshake. She hadn't

blogged their meeting in Detroit, so if Francis and Perry knew about

Lester's transformation, they'd found out without hearing it from her.

She finished recording the homecoming from Mrs Torrence's crow's nest,

then paid the grinning old bag and took the stairs two at a time,

hurrying to catch up with Lester and his crowd.

Lester accepted her hug warmly but distantly, letting go a fraction of

a second before she did. She didn't let it get to her. He had drawn a

crowd now, with Francis's protege printer-techs in the innermost

circle, and he was recounting the story of his transformation. He had

them as spellbound as a roomful of Ewoks listening to C3PO.

"Shit, why don't we sell that stuff?" Jason said. He'd taken a real

interest in the business end of their three-d printer project.

"Too much competition," Lester said. "There are already a dozen shops

tooling up to make bathtub versions of the therapy here in

America. Hundreds more in Eastern Europe. There just won't be any

profit in it by the time we get to market. Getting thin on the cheap's

going to be *easy*. Hell, all it takes to do it is the stuff you'd use

for a meth lab. You can buy all that in a kit from a catalog."

Jason nodded, but looked unconvinced.

Suzanne took Lester's return as her cue to write about his

transformation. She snapped more pics of him, added some video. He

gave her ten minutes' description of the therapies he'd undergone, and

named a price for the therapy that was substantially lower than a

couple weeks at a Hollywood fat-farm, and far more effective.

The response was amazing. Every TV news-crew in the greater Miami area

made a pilgrimage to their factory to film Lester working in a tight

t-shirt over a three-d printer, wrangling huge vats of epoxy-mix goop

in the sun with sweat beading over his big, straining biceps.

Her message boards exploded. It seemed that a heretofore unsuspected

contingent of her growing readership was substantially obese. And they

had friends. Lester eventually gave up on posting, just so he could

get some work done. They had the printers to the point where they

could turn out new printers, but the whole system was temperamental

and needed careful nursing. Lester was more interested in what people

had to say on the engineering message-boards than chatting with the

fatties.

The fatties were skeptical and hopeful in equal measures. The big

fight was over whether there was anything to this, whether Lester

would keep the weight off, whether the new skinny Lester was really

Lester, whether he'd undergone surgery or had his stomach

stapled. America's wallets had been cleaned out by so many snake-oil

peddlers with a "cure" for obesity that no one could believe what they

saw, no matter how much they wanted to.

Lord, but it was bringing in the readers, not to mention the

advertising dollars. The clearing price for a thousand weight-loss ads

targeted to affluent, obese English-speakers was over fifty bucks, as

compared with her customary CPM of three bucks a thou. Inside of a

week, she'd made enough to buy a car. It was weird being her own

circulation and ad-sales department, but it wasn't as hard as she'd

worried it might be -- and it was intensely satisfying to have such a

nose-to-tail understanding of the economics of her production.

"You should go," Lester told her as she clicked him through her

earnings spreadsheet. "Jesus, this is insane. You know that these

fatties actually follow me around on the net now, asking me questions

in message boards about engineering? The board moderators are asking

me to post under an assumed name. Madame, your public has

spoken. There is a dire need for your skills in St

Petersburg. Go. They have chandeliers in the subways and caviar on

tap. All the blini you can eat. Bear steaks."

She shook her head and slurped at the tea he'd brought her. "You're

joking. It's all mafiyeh there. Scary stuff. Besides, I'm covering

this beat right now, New Work."

"New Work isn't going anywhere, Suzanne. We'll be here when you get

back. And this story is one that needs your touch. They're

micro-entrepreneurs solving post-industrial problems. It's the same

story you've been covering here, but with a different angle. Take that

money and buy yourself a business-class ticket to St Petersburg and

spend a couple weeks on the job. You'll clean up. They could use the

publicity, too -- someone to go and drill down on which clinics are

legit and which ones are clip-joints. You're perfect for the gig."

"I don't know," she said. She closed her eyes. Taking big chances had

gotten her this far and it would take her farther, she knew. The world

was your oyster if you could stomach a little risk.

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, hell yeah. You're totally right, Lester."

"Zasterovyeh!"

"What you said!"

"It's cheers," he said. "You'll need to know that if you're going to

make time in Petrograd. Let me go send some email and get you set

up. You book a ticket."

#

And just like that she was off to Russia. Lester insisted that she buy

a business-class ticket, and she discovered to her bemusement that

British Airways had about three classes above business, presumably

with even more exclusive classes reserved to royalty and peers of the

realm. She luxuriated in fourteen hours of reclining seats and warm

peanuts and in-flight connectivity, running a brief videoconference

with Lester just because she could. Tjan had sent her a guide to the

hotels and she'd opted for the Pribaltiyskaya, a crumbling Stalin-era

four-star of spectacular, Vegasesque dimensions. The facade revealed

the tragedy of the USSR's unrequited love-affair with concrete, as did

the cracks running up the walls of the lobby.

They checked her into the hotel with the nosiest questionnaire ever, a

two-pager on government stationary that demanded to know her

profession, employer, city of birth, details of family, and so

forth. An American businessman next to her at the check-in counter saw

her puzzling over it. "Just make stuff up," he said. "I always write

that I come from 123 Fake Street, Anytown, California, and that I work

as a professional paper-hanger. They don't check on it, except maybe

the mob when they're figuring out who to mug. First time in Russia?"

"It shows, huh?"

"You get used to it," he said. "I come here every month on

business. You just need to understand that if it seems ridiculous and

too bad to be true, it is. They have lots of rules here, but no one

follows 'em. Just ignore any unreasonable request and you'll fit right

in."

"That's good advice," she said. He was middle-aged, but so was she,

and he had nice eyes and no wedding ring.

"Get a whole night's sleep, don't drink the so-called 'champagne' and

don't change money on the streets. Did you bring melatonin and

modafinil?"

She stared blankly at him. "Drugs?"

"Sure. One tonight to sleep, one in the morning to wake up, and do it

again tomorrow and you'll be un-lagged. No booze or caffeine, either,

not for the first couple days. Melatonin's over the counter, even in

the States, and modafinil's practically legal. I have extra, here." He

dug in his travel bag and came up with some generic Walgreens bottles.

"That's OK," she said, handing her credit card to a pretty young

clerk. "Thanks, though."

He shook his head. "It's your funeral," he said. "Jet-lag is way worse

for you than this stuff. It's over the counter stateside. I don't

leave home without it. Anyway, I'm in room 1422. If it's two in the

morning and you're staring at the ceiling and regretting it, call me

and I'll send some down."

Was he hitting on her? Christ, she was so tired, she could barely see

straight. There was no way she was going to need any help getting to

sleep. She thanked him again and rolled her suitcase across the

cavernous lobby with its gigantic chandeliers and to the elevators.

But sleep didn't come. The network connection cost a fortune --

something she hadn't seen in years -- and the number of worms and

probes bouncing off her firewall was astronomical. The connection was

slow and frustrating. Come 2AM, she was, indeed, staring at the

ceiling.

Would you take drugs offered by a stranger in a hotel lobby? They were

in a *Walgreens bottle* for chrissakes. How bad could they be? She

picked up the house-phone on the chipped bedstand and punched his

hotel room.

"Lo?"

"Oh Christ, I woke you up," she said. "I'm sorry."

"'Sok. Lady from check-in, right? Gimme your room number, I'll send up

a melatonin now and a modafinil for the morning. No sweatski."

"Uh," she hadn't thought about giving a strange man her room

number. In for a penny, in for a pound. "2813," she said. "Thanks."

"Geoff," he said. "It's Geoff. New York -- upper West Side. Work in

health products."

"Suzanne," she said. "Florida, lately. I'm a writer."

"Good night, Suzanne. Pills are en route."

"Good night, Geoff. Thanks."

"Tip the porter a euro, or a couple bucks. Don't bother with rubles."

"Oh," she said. It had been a long time since her last visit

overseas. She'd forgotten how much minutiae was involved.

He hung up. She put on a robe and waited. The porter took about

fifteen minutes, and handed her a little envelope with two pills in

it. He was about fifteen, with a bad mustache and bad skin, and bad

teeth that he displayed when she handed him a couple of dollar bills.

A minute later, she was back on the phone.

"Which one is which?"

"Little white one is melatonin. That's for now. My bad."

She saw him again in the breakfast room, loading a plate with

hard-boiled eggs, potato pancakes, the ubiquitous caviar, salami, and

cheeses. In his other hand he balanced a vat of porridge with

strawberry jam and enough dried fruit to keep a parrot zoo happy for a

month.

"How do you keep your girlish figure if you eat like that?" she said,

settling down at his table.

"Ah, that's a professional matter," he said. "And I make it a point

never to discuss bizniz before I've had two cups of coffee." He poured

himself a cup of decaf. "This is number two."

She picked her way through her cornflakes and fruit salad. "I always

feel like I don't get my money's worth out of buffet breakfasts," she

said.

"Don't worry," he said. "I'll make up for you." He pounded his coffee

and poured another cup. "Humanity returns," he said, rubbing his

thighs. "Marthter, the creature waketh!" he said in high Igor.

She laughed.

"You are really into, uh, *substances*, aren't you?" she said.

"I am a firm believer in better living through chemistry," he said. He

pounded another coffee. "Ahhh. Coffee and modafinil are an amazing

combo."

She'd taken hers that morning when the alarm got her up. She'd been so

tired that it actually made her feel nauseated to climb out of bed,

but the modafinil was getting her going. She knew a little about the

drug, and figured that if the TSA approved it for use by commercial

pilots, it couldn't be that bad for you.

"So, my girlish figure. I work for a firm that has partners here in

Petersburg who work on cutting-edge pharma products, including some

stuff the FDA is dragging its heels on, despite widespread acceptance

in many nations, this one included. One of these is a pill that

overclocks your metabolism. I've been on it for a year now, and even

though I am a stone calorie freak and pack away five or six thousand

calories a day, I don't gain an ounce. I actually have to remember to

eat enough so that my ribs don't start showing."

Suzanne watched him gobble another thousand calories. "Is it healthy?"

"Compared to what? Being fat? Yes. Running ten miles a day and eating

a balanced diet of organic fruit and nuts? No. But when the average

American gets the majority of her calories from soda-pop, 'healthy' is

a pretty loaded term."

It reminded her of that talk with Lester, a lifetime ago in the

IHOP. Slowly, she found herself telling him about Lester's story.

"Wait a second, you're Suzanne *Church*? New Work Church? San Jose

Mercury News Church?"

She blushed. "You can't *possibly* have heard of me," she said.

He rolled his eyes. "Sure. I shoulder-surfed your name off the

check-in form and did a background check on you last night just so I

could chat you up over breakfast."

It was a joke, but it gave her a funny, creeped-out feeling. "You're

kidding?"

"I'm kidding. I've been reading you for freaking *years*. I followed

Lester's story in detail. Professional interest. You're the voice of

our generation, woman. I'd be a philistine if I didn't read your

column."

"You're not making me any less embarrassed, you know." It took an

effort of will to keep from squirming.

He laughed hard enough to attract stares. "All right, I *did* spend

the night googling you. Better?"

"If that's the alternative, I'll take famous, I suppose," she said.

"You're here writing about the weight loss clinics, then?"

"Yes," she said. It wasn't a secret, but she hadn't actually gone out

of her way to mention it. After all, there might not be any kind of

story after all. And somewhere in the back of her mind was the idea

that she didn't want to tip off some well-funded newsroom to send out

its own investigative team and get her scoop.

"That is fantastic," he said. "That's just, wow, that's the best news

I've had all year. You taking an interest in our stuff, it's going to

really push it over the edge. You'd think that selling weight-loss to

Americans would be easy, but not if it involves any kind of travel: 80

percent of those lazy insular fucks don't even have

passports. Ha. Don't quote that. Ha."

"Ha," she said. "Don't worry, I won't. Look, how about this, we'll

meet in the lobby around nine, after dinner, for a cup of coffee and

an interview?" She had gone from intrigued to flattered to creeped-out

with this guy, and besides, she had her first clinic visit scheduled

for ten and it was coming up on nine and who knew what a Russian

rush-hour looked like?

"Oh. OK. But you've got to let me schedule you for a visit to some of

our clinics and plants -- just to see what a professional shop we run

here. No gold-teeth-shiny-suit places like you'd get if you just

picked the top Google AdWord. Really American-standard places, better

even, Scandinavian-standard, a lot of our doctors come over from

Sweden and Denmark to get out from under the socialist medicine

systems there. They run a tight ship, ya shore, you betcha," he

delivered this last in a broad Swedish bork-bork-bork.

"Um," she said. "It all depends on scheduling. Let's sort it out

tonight, OK?"

"OK," he said. "Can't *wait*." He stood up with her and gave her a

long, two-handed handshake. "It's a real honor to meet you,

Suzanne. You're one of my real heros, you know that?"

"Um," she said again. "Thanks, Geoff."

He seemed to sense that he'd come on too strong. He looked like he was

about to apologize.

"That's really kind of you to say," she said. "It'll be good to catch

up tonight."

He brightened. It was easy enough to be kind, after all.

She had the front desk call her a taxi -- she'd been repeatedly warned

off of gypsy cabs and any vehicle that one procured by means of a

wandering tout. She got into the back, had the doorman repeat the

directions to Lester's clinic twice to the cabbie, watched him switch

on the meter and checked the tariff, then settled in to watch St

Petersburg go flying by.

She switched on her phone and watched it struggle to associate with a

Russian network. They were on the road for all of five minutes -- long

enough to note the looming bulk of the Hermitage and the ripples left

by official cars slicing through the traffic with their blue blinking

lights -- when her phone went nutso. She looked at it -- she had ten

texts, half a dozen voicemails, a dozen new clipped articles, and it

was ringing with a number in New York.

She bumped the New York call to voicemail. She didn't recognize the

number. Besides, if the world had come to an end while she was asleep,

she wanted to know some details before she talked to anyone about

it. She paged back through the texts in reverse chronological -- the

last five were increasingly panicked messages from Lester and

Perry. Then one from Tjan. Then one from Kettlebelly. They all wanted

to discuss "the news" whatever that was. One from her old editor at

the Merc asking if she was available for comment about "the news."

Tjan, too. The first one was from Rat-Toothed Freddy, that snake.

"Kodacell's creditors calling in debts. Share price below one

cent. Imminent NASDAQ de-listing. Comments?"

Her stomach went cold, her breakfast congealed into a hard lump. The

clipped articles had quotes from Kettlewell ("We will see to it that

all our employees are paid, our creditors are reimbursed, and our

shareholders are well-done-by through an orderly wind-down"), Perry

("Fuck it -- I was doing this shit before Kodacell, don't expect to

stop now") and Lester ("It was too beautiful and cool to be real, I

guess.") Where she was mentioned, it was usually in a snide context

that made her out to be a disgraced pitchwoman for a failed movement.

Which she was. Basically.

Her phone rang. Kettlewell.

"Hi, Kettlewell," she said.

"Where have you been?" he said. He sounded really edgy. It was the

middle of the night in California.

"I'm in St Petersburg," she said. "In Russia. I only found out about

ten seconds ago. What happened?"

"Oh Christ. Who knows? Cascading failure. Fell short of last quarter's

estimates, which started a slide. Then a couple lawsuits filed. Then

some unfavorable press. The share price kept falling, and things got

worse. Your basic clusterfuck."

"But you guys had great numbers overall --"

"Sure, if you looked at them our way, they were great. If you looked

at them the way the Street looks at them, we were in deep

shit. Analysts couldn't figure out how to value us. Add a little

market chaos and some old score-settling assholes, like that fucker

Freddy, and it's a wonder we lasted as long as we did. They're already

calling us the twenty first century Enron."

"Kettlewell," she said, "I lived through a couple of these, and

something's not right. When the dotcoms were going under, their CEOs

kept telling everyone everything was all right, right up to the last

minute. They didn't throw in the towel. They stood like captains on

the bridge of sinking ships."

"So?"

"So what's going on here. It sounds like you're whipped. Why aren't

you fighting? There were lots of dotcoms that tanked, but a few of

those deep-in-denial CEOs pulled it off, restructured and came out of

it alive. Why are you giving up?"

"Suzanne, oh, Suzanne." He laughed, but it wasn't a happy laugh. "You

think that this happened overnight? You think that this problem just

cropped up yesterday and I tossed in the towel?"

Oh. "Oh."

"Yeah. We've been tanking for months. I've been standing on the bridge

of this sinking ship with my biggest smile pasted on for two

consecutive quarters now. I've thrown out the most impressive reality

distortion field the business world has ever seen. Just because I'm

giving up doesn't mean I gave up without a fight."

Suzanne had never been good at condolences. She hated

funerals. "Landon, I'm sorry. It must have been very hard --"

"Yeah," he said. "Well, sure. I wanted you to have the scoop on this,

but I had to talk to the press once the story broke, you understand."

"I understand," she said. "Scoops aren't that important anyway. I'll

tell you what. I'll post a short piece on this right away, just

saying, 'Yes, it's true, and I'm getting details.' Then I'll do

interviews with you and Lester and Perry and put up something longer

in a couple of hours. Does that work?"

He laughed again, no humor in it. "Yeah, that'll be *fine*."

"Sorry, Kettlewell."

"No, no," he said. "No, it's OK."

"Look, I just want to write about this in a way that honors what

you've done over the past two years. I've never been present at the

birth of anything remotely this important. It deserves to be described

well."

It sounded like he might be crying. There was a snuffling

sound. "You've been amazing, Suzanne. We couldn't have done it without

you. No one could have described it better. Great deeds are irrelevant

if no one knows about them or remembers them."

Her phone was beeping. She snuck a peek. It was her old

editor. "Listen," she said. "I have to go. There's a call coming in I

*have* to take. I can call you right back."

"Don't," he said. "It's OK. I'm busy here anyway. This is a big day."

His laugh was like a dog's bark.

"Take care of yourself, Kettlewell," she said. "Don't let the bastards

grind you down."

"Nil carborundum illegitimis to you, too."

She clicked over to her editor. "Jimmy," she said. "Long time no

speak. Sorry I missed your calls before -- I'm in Russia on a story."

"Hello, Suzanne," he said. His voice had an odd, strained quality, or

maybe that was just her mood, projecting. "I'm sorry, Suzanne. You've

been doing good work. The best work of your career, if you ask me. I

follow it closely."

It made her feel a little better. She'd been uncomfortable about the

way she and Jimmy had parted ways, but this was vindicating. It

emboldened her. "Jimmy, what the hell do I do now?"

"Christ, Suzanne, I don't know. I'll tell you what not to do,

though. Off the record."

"Off the record."

"Don't do what I've done. Don't hang grimly onto the last planks from

the sinking ship, chronicling the last few struggling, sinking

schmucks' demise. It's no fun being the stenographer for the fall of a

great empire. Find something else to cover."

The words made her heart sink. Poor Jimmy, stuck there in the Merc's

once-great newsroom, while the world crumbled around him. It must have

been heartbreaking.

"Thanks," she said. "You want an interview?"

"What? No, woman. I'm not a ghoul. I wanted to call and make sure you

were all right."

"Jimmy, you're a prince. But I'll be OK. I land on my feet. You've got

someone covering this story, so give her my number and have her call

me and I'll give her a quote."

"Really, Suzanne --"

"It's *fine*, Jimmy."

"Suzanne," he said. "We don't cover that kind of thing from our

newsroom anymore. Just local stuff. National coverage comes from the

wires or from the McClatchy national newsroom."

She sucked in air. Could it be possible? Her first thought when Jimmy

called was that she'd made a terrible mistake by leaving the Merc, but

if this was what the paper had come to, she had left just in time,

even if her own life-raft was sinking, it had kept her afloat for a

while.

"The offer still stands, Jimmy. I'll talk to anyone you want to

assign."

"You're a sweetheart, Suzanne. What are you in Russia for?"

She told him. Screw scoops, anyway. Not like Jimmy was going to send

anyone to *Russia*, he couldn't even afford to dispatch a reporter to

Marin County by the sounds of things.

"What a story!" he said. "Man!"

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah I guess it is."

"You *guess*? Suzanne, this is the single most important issue in

practically every American's life -- there isn't one in a thousand who

doesn't worry endlessly about his weight."

"Well, I have been getting really good numbers on this." She named the

figure. He sucked air between his teeth. "That's what the whole

freaking *chain* does on a top story, Suzanne. You're outperforming

fifty local papers *combined.*"

"Yeah?"

"Hell yeah," he said. "Maybe I should ask you for a job."

When he got off the phone, she spoke to Perry, and then to

Lester. Lester said that he wanted to go traveling and see his old

friends in Russia and that if she was still around in a couple weeks,

maybe he'd see her there. Perry was morose and grimly determined. He

was on the verge of shipping his three-d printers and he was sure he

could do it, even if he didn't have the Kodacell network for marketing

and logistics. He didn't even seem to register it when she told him

that she was going to be spending some time in Russia.

Then she had to go into the clinic and ask intelligent questions and

take pictures and record audio and jot notes and pay attention to the

small details so that she would be able to write the best account

possible.

They dressed well in Russia, in the clinics. Business casual, but well

tailored and made from good material. The Europeans knew from

textiles, and expert tailoring seemed to be in cheap supply here.

She'd have to get someone to run her up a blue blazer and a white

shirt and a decent skirt. It would be nice to get back into grown-up

clothes after a couple years' worth of Florida casual.

She'd see Geoff after dinner that night, get more detail for the

story. There was something big here in the medical tourism angle --

not just weight loss but gene therapy, too, and voodoo stem-cell stuff

and advanced prostheses and even some crazy performance enhancement

stuff that had kept Russia out of the past Olympics.

She typed her story notes and answered the phone calls. One special

call she returned once she was sitting in her room, relaxed, with a

cup of coffee from the in-room coffee-maker.

"Hello, Freddy," she said.

"Suzanne, darling!" He sounded like he was breathing hard.

"What can I do for you?"

"Just wanted a quote, love, something for color."

"Oh, I've got a quote for you." She'd given the quote a lot of

thought. Living with the squatters had broadened her vocabulary

magnificently.

"And those are your good points," she said, taking a sip of

coffee. "Goodbye, Freddy."

$$$$