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.
Kurt walked over to the nearest shelving unit and grabbed a PC mini-tower with the lid off. “But did you ever do this?” He stuck the machine under Alan’s nose and swung the gooseneck desk lamp over it. It was a white-box PC, generic commodity hardware, with a couple of network cards.
“What’s that?”