The air hummed with conversation and coffee smells, the latter
emanating from a catering-sized urn in the corner.
He was roundly ignored -- and before he could speak again, one of the
PCs on the floor started booming out fuzzy, grungy rockabilly music that
made him think of Elvis cassettes that had been submerged in salt
water. Half of the assembled mass started bobbing their heads and
singing along while the other half rolled their eyes and groaned.
Kurt came out of the back and hunkered down with the PC, turning down
the volume a little. "Howdy!" he said, spreading his arms and taking in
the whole of his dominion.
"Howdy yourself," Alan said. "What do we have here?"
"We have a glut of volunteers," Kurt said, watching as an old rummy
carefully shot a picture of a flat-panel LCD that was minus its
housing. "I can't figure out if those laptop screens are worth
anything," he said, cocking his head. "But they've been taking up space
for far too long. Time we moved them."
Alan looked around and realized that the workers he'd taken to be at
work building access points were, in the main, shooting digital pictures
of junk from Kurt's diving runs and researching them for eBay
listings. It made him feel good -- great, even. It was like watching an
Inventory being assembled from out of chaos.
"Where'd they all come from?"
Kurt shrugged.
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