Alan nodded slowly. "We've been thinking about a mapping application --" "But we decided that it was stupid," Kurt said. "No one needed to draw a map of the Web -- it just grew and people found its weird corners on their own. Networks don't *need* centralized authority, that's just the chains on your mind talking --" "The chains on my mind?" The kid snorted. Alan held his hands up placatingly. "Wait a second," he said. "Let's take a step back here and talk about *values*. The project here is about free expression and cooperation. Sure, it'd be nice to have a city-wide network, but in my opinion, it's a lot more important to have a city full of people working on that network because they value expression and understand how cooperation gets us more of that." "And we'll get this free expression how?" "By giving everyone free Internet access." The kid laughed and shook his head. "That's a weird kind of 'free,' if you don't mind my saying so." He flipped over his phone. "I mean, it's like, 'Free speech if you can afford a two-thousand-dollar laptop and want to sit down and type on it.'" "I can build you a desktop out of garbage for twenty bucks," Kurt said. "We're drowning in PC parts." "Sure, whatever. But what kind of free expression is that? Free expression so long as you're sitting at home with your PC plugged into the wall?" "Well, it's not like we're talking about displacing all the other kinds of expression," Alan said. "This is in addition to all the ways you've had to talk --" "Right, like this thing," the kid said. He reached into his pocket and took out a small phone. "This was free -- not twenty dollars, not even two thousand dollars -- just free, from the phone company, in exchange for a one-year contract. Everyone's got one of these. I went trekking in India, you see people using these out in the bush. And you know what they use them for? Speech! Not speech-in-quotes meaning some kind of abstract expression, but actual *talking.*" The kid leaned forward and planted his hands on his knees and suddenly he was a lot harder to dismiss as some subculture-addled intern. He had that fiery intensity that Alan recognized from himself, from Kurt, from the people who believe. Alan thought he was getting an inkling into why this particular intern had responded to his press release: Not because he was too ignorant to see through the bullshit, but just the opposite. "But that's communication through the *phone company*," Kurt said, wonderment in his voice that his fellow bohemian couldn't see how sucktastic that proposition was. "How is that free speech?"