Alan looked around and realized that the workers he'd taken to be at work building access points were, in the main, shooting digital pictures of junk from Kurt's diving runs and researching them for eBay listings. It made him feel good -- great, even. It was like watching an Inventory being assembled from out of chaos. "Where'd they all come from?" Kurt shrugged. "I dunno. I guess we hit critical mass. You recruit a few people, they recruit a few people. It's a good way to make a couple bucks, you get to play with boss crap, you get paid in cash, and you have colorful co-workers." He shrugged again. "I guess they came from wherever the trash came from. The city provides." The homeless guy they were standing near squinted up at them. "If either of you says something like, *Ah, these people were discarded by society, but just as with the junk we rescue from landfills, we have seen the worth of these poor folks and rescued them from the scrapheap of society,* I'm gonna puke." "The thought never crossed my mind," Alan said solemnly. "Keep it up, Wes," Kurt said, patting the man on the shoulder. "See you at the Greek's tonight?" "Every night, so long as he keeps selling the cheapest beer in the Market," Wes said, winking at Alan. "It's cash in the door," Kurt said. "Buying components is a lot more efficient than trying to find just the right parts." He gave Alan a mildly reproachful look. Ever since they'd gone to strictly controlled designs, Kurt had been heartbroken by the amount of really nice crap that never made its way into an access point. "This is pretty amazing," Alan said. "You're splitting the money with them?" "The profit -- anything leftover after buying packaging and paying postage." He walked down the line, greeting people by name, shaking hands, marveling at the gewgaws and gimcracks that he, after all, had found in some nighttime dumpster and brought back to be recycled. "God, I love this. It's like Napster for dumpsters." "How's that?" Alan asked, pouring himself a coffee and adding some UHT cream from a giant, slightly dented box of little creamers. "Most of the music ever recorded isn't for sale at any price. Like 80 percent of it. And the labels, they've made copyright so strong, no one can figure out who all that music belongs to -- not even them! Costs a fortune to clear a song. Pal of mine once did a CD of Christmas music remixes, and he tried to figure out who owned the rights to all the songs he wanted to use. He just gave up after a year -- and he had only cleared one song! "So along comes Napster. It finds the only possible way of getting all that music back into our hands. It gives millions and millions of people an incentive to rip their old CDs -- hell, their old vinyl and tapes, too! -- and put them online. No label could have afforded to do that, but the people just did it for free. It was like a barn-raising: a library raising!"