It's penetration at
the center, just like the Devo song."
"I'm Adrian," Alan said.
"I'm Kurt," the crusty-punk said. "Buy me a beer, Adrian?"
"It'd be my pleasure," Alan said.
#
Kurt lived in the back of a papered-over storefront on Oxford. The front
two-thirds were a maze of peeling, stickered-over stamped-metal shelving
units piled high with junk tech: ancient shrink-wrapped software,
stacked up low-capacity hard drives, cables and tapes and removable
media. Alan tried to imagine making sense of it all, flowing it into The
Inventory, and felt something like vertigo.
In a small hollow carved out of the back, Kurt had arranged a cluttered
desk, a scuffed twin bed and a rack of milk crates filled with t-shirts
and underwear.
Alan picked his way delicately through the store and found himself a
seat on an upturned milk crate. Kurt sat on the bed and grinned
expectantly.
"So?" he said.
"So what?" Alan said.
"So what is *this*! Isn't it great?"
"Well, you sure have a lot of *stuff,* I'll give you that," Alan said.
"It's all dumpstered," Kurt said casually.
"Oh, you dive?" Alan said. "I used to dive." It was mostly true. Alan
had always been a picker, always on the lookout for bargoons, even if
they were sticking out of someone's trash bin. Sometimes *especially* if
they were sticking out of someone's trash bin -- seeing what normal
people threw away gave him a rare glimpse into their lives.
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