Alan tried to unfocus his eyes when he
was in the front of Kurt's shop, to not see any of them too closely.
"They work," Kurt said. He smelled terrible, a combination of garbage
and sweat, and he had the raccoon-eyed jitters he got when he stayed up
all night. "I tested them twice."
"You built me a spare?" Alan said, examining the neat lines of hot glue
that gasketed the sturdy rubberized antennae in place, masking the
slightly melted edges left behind by the drill press.
"You don't need a spare," Kurt said. Alan knew that when he got touchy
like this, he had to be very careful or he'd blow up, but he wasn't
going to do another demo Kurt's way. They'd done exactly one of those,
at a Toronto District School Board superintendents meeting, when Alan
had gotten the idea of using schools' flagpoles and backhaul as test
beds for building out the net. It had been a debacle, needless to
say. Two of the access points had been permanently installed on either
end of Kurt's storefront and the third had been in storage for a month
since it was last tested.
One of the street kids, a boy with a pair of improbably enormous raver
shoes, looked up at Alan. "We've tested these all. They work."
Kurt puffed up and gratefully socked the kid in the shoulder. "We did."
"Fine," Adam said patiently. "But can we make sure they work now?"
"They'll work," Kurt had said when Alan told him that he wanted to test
the access points out before they took them to the meeting.
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