“That’s what we’re delivering. Prepaid cards for Internet access. Complet avec number shortages and business travelers prowling the bagel joints of Rue St Urbain looking for a shopkeeper whose cash drawer has a few seven-day cards kicking around.
“And you come in here, and you ask me, you ask the ruling Bell, what advice do we have for your metro-wide free info-hippie wireless dumpster-diver anarcho-network? Honestly—I don’t have a fucking clue. We don’t have a fucking clue. We’re a telephone company. We don’t know how to give away free communications—we don’t even know how to charge for it.”
“That was refreshingly honest,” Kurt said. “I wanna shake your hand.”
He stood up and Lyman stood up and Lyman’s posse stood up and they converged on the doorway in an orgy of handshaking and grinning. The graybeard handed over the access point, and the East Indian woman ran off to get the other two, and before they knew it, they were out on the street.
“I liked him,” Kurt said.
“I could tell,” Alan said.
“Remember you said something about an advisory board? How about if we ask him to join?”
“That is a tremendous and deeply weird idea, partner. I’ll send out the invite when we get home.”
Kurt said that the anarchist bookstore would be a slam dunk, but it turned out to be the hardest sell of all.