"Kettlewell's coming down to see this," Perry said. Her stomach lurched. She'd gotten the boys in trouble. "Is he mad?" "I couldn't tell -- I got voicemail at three AM." Midnight in San Jose, the hour at which Kettlewell got his mad impulses. "He'll be here this afternoon." "That jet makes it too easy for him to get around," she said, and stretched out her back. Sitting at her desk all morning answering emails and cleaning up some draft posts before blogging them had her in knots. It was practically lunch-time. "Perry," she began, then trailed off. "It's all right," he said. "I know why you did it. Christ, we wouldn't be where we are if you hadn't written about us. I'm in no position to tell you to stop now." He swallowed. The month since the shantytowners had moved in had put five years on him. His tan was fading, the wrinkles around his eyes deeper, grey salting his stubbly beard and short hair. "But you'll help me with Kettlewell, right?" "I'll come along and write down what he says," she said. "That usually helps." # :: Kodacell is supposed to be a new way of doing business. :: Decentralized, net-savvy, really twenty-first century. The :: suck-up tech press and tech-addled bloggers have been trumpeting :: its triumph over all other modes of commerce. :: :: But what does decentralization really mean? On her "blog" this :: week, former journalist Suzanne Church reports that the inmates :: running the flagship Kodacell asylum in suburban Florida have :: invited an entire village of homeless squatters to take up :: residence at their factory premises. :: :: Describing their illegal homesteading as "live-work" condos that :: Dr Seuss might have designed, Kodacell shill Church goes on to :: describe how this captive, live-in audience has been converted to :: a workforce for Kodacell's most profitable unit ("most :: profitable" is a relative term: to date, this unit has turned a :: profit of about 1.5 million, per the last quarterly report; by :: contrast the old Kodak's most profitable unit made twenty times :: that in its last quarter of operation). :: :: America has a grand tradition of this kind of indentured living: :: the coal-barons' company towns of the 19th century are the :: original model for this kind of industrial practice in the USA. :: Substandard housing and only one employer in town -- that's the :: kind of brave new world that Church's boyfriend Kettlewell has :: created. :: :: A reader writes: "I live near the shantytown that was relocated :: to the Kodacell factory in Florida. It was a dangerous slum full :: of drug dealers. None of the parents in my neighborhood let their :: kids ride their bikes along the road that passed it by -- it was :: a haven for all kinds of down-and-out trash." :: :: There you have it, the future of the American workforce: :: down-and-out junkie squatters working for starvation wages.