He
scrambled over the dumpster's transom and fell into it, expecting a wash
of sour kitchen waste to break over him, and finding himself, instead,
amid hundreds of five-inch cardboard boxes.
"What's this?" he asked.
Kurt was picking up the boxes and shaking them, listening for the
rattle. "This place is an import/export wholesaler. They throw out a lot
of defective product, since it's cheaper than shipping it all back to
Taiwan for service. But my kids will fix it and sell it on eBay. Here,"
he said, opening a box and shaking something out, handing it to him. He
passed his light over to Alan, who took it, unmindful of the drool on
the handle.
It was a rubber duckie. Alan turned it over and saw it had a hard chunk
of metal growing out of its ass.
"More of these, huh?" Kurt said. "I found about a thousand of these last
month. They're USB keychain drives, low-capacity, like 32MB. Plug them
in and they show up on your desktop like a little hard drive. They light
up in all kinds of different colors. The problem is, they've all got a
manufacturing defect that makes them glow in just one color -- whatever
shade the little gel carousel gets stuck on.
"I've got a couple thousand of these back home, but they're selling
briskly. Go get me a couple cardboard boxes from that dumpster there and
we'll snag a couple hundred more.
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