"I'm saying yes," Tjan said, grinning piratically. "I'm saying that I'll join your little weird-ass hobby business and I'll open another ride here for the Massholes. I'll help you run the franchising op, collect fees, make it profitable." Perry felt his face tighten. "What? I thought you'd be happy about this." "I am," Perry said. "But you're misunderstanding something. These aren't meant to be profitable businesses. I'm done with that. These are art, or community, or something. They're museums. Lester calls them *wunderkammers* -- cabinets of wonders. There's no franchising op the way you're talking about it. It's ad hoc. It's a protocol we all agree on, not a business arrangement." Tjan grunted. "I don't think I understand the difference between a agreed-upon protocol and a business arrangement." He held up his hand to fend off Perry's next remark. "But it doesn't matter. You can let people have the franchise for free. You can claim that you're not letting anyone have anything, that they're letting themselves in for their franchise. It doesn't matter to me. "But Perry, here's something you're going to have to understand: it's going to be nearly impossible *not to* make a business out of this. Businesses are great structures for managing big projects. It's like trying to develop the ability to walk without developing a skeleton. Once in a blue moon, you get an octopus, but for the most part, you get skeletons. Skeletons are good shit." "Tjan, I want you to come on board to help me create an octopus," Perry said. "I can try," Tjan said, "but it won't be easy. When you do cool stuff, you end up making money." "Fine," Perry said. "Make money. But keep it to a minimum, OK?" # The next time Perry turned up at Logan, it was colder than the inside of an icebox and shitting down grey snow with the consistency of frozen custard. "Great weather for an opening," he said, once he'd climbed through the roof of Tjan's car and gotten snow all over the leather upholstery. "Sorry about the car." "Don't sweat it, the kids are murder on leather. I should trade this thing in on something that's less of a deathtrap anyway." Tjan was balder than he'd been in September, and skinnier. He had a three-day beard that further hollowed out his normally round cheeks. The Lada sports-car fishtailed a little as they navigated the tunnels back toward Cambridge, the roads slick and icy. "We scored an excellent location," Tjan said. "I told you that, but check this out." They were right in the middle of a built-up area of Boston, something that felt like a banking district, with impressive towers. It took Perry a minute to figure out what Tjan was pointing at. "That's the site?" There was a mall on the corner, with a boarded up derelict Hyatt overtopping it, rising high into the sky. "But it's right in the middle of town!"