It took a couple weeks to hive off the Home Aware stuff to some of the other Kodacell business-units. Perry flew a bunch, spending days in Minnesota, Oregon, Ohio, and Michigan overseeing the retooling efforts that would let him focus on his new project. By the time he got back, Lester had retooled their own workspace, converting it to four functional areas: communications, shelter, food and entertainment. "They were Francis's idea," he said. Francis's gimpy leg was bothering him more and more, but he'd overseen the work from a rolling ergonomic office-chair. "It's his version of the hierarchy of needs -- stuff he knows for sure we can sell." It was the first time the boys had launched something new without knowing what it was, where they'd started with a niche and decided to fill it instead of starting with an idea and looking for a niche for it. "You're going to underestimate the research time," Francis said during one of their flip-chart brainstorms, where they had been covering sheet after sheet with ideas for products they could build. "Everyone underestimates research time. Deciding what to make is always harder than making it." He'd been drinking less since he'd gotten involved in the retooling effort, waking earlier, bossing around his young-blood posse to get him paper, bricks, Tinkertoys. He was right. Suzanne steadily recorded the weeks ticking by as the four competing labs focus-grouped, designed, tested and scrapped all manner of "tchotchkes for tramps," as Freddy had dubbed it in a spiraling series of ever-more-bilious columns. But the press was mostly positive: camera crews liked to come by and shoot the compound. One time, the pretty black reporter from the night of the fire came by and said very nice things during her standup. Her name was Maria and she was happy to talk shop with Suzanne, endlessly fascinated by a "real" journalist who'd gone permanently slumming on the Internet. "The problem is that all this stuff is too specialized, it has too many prerequisites," Perry said, staring at a waterproof, cement-impregnated bag that could be filled with a hose, allowed to dry, and used as a self-contained room. "This thing is great for refugees, but it's too one-size-fits all for squatters. They have to be able to heavily customize everything they use to fit into really specialized niches." More squatters had arrived to take up residence with them -- families, friends, a couple of dodgy drifters -- and a third story was going onto the buildings in the camp. They were even more Dr Seussian than the first round, idiosyncratic structures that had to be built light to avoid crushing the floors below them, hanging out over the narrow streets, corkscrewing like vines seeking sun. He kept staring, and would have been staring still had he not heard the sirens. Three blue-and-white Broward County sheriff's cars were racing down the access road into their dead mall, sirens howling, lights blazing.