Part 17 (1/2)

”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 flags.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+ll 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 pa.s.sed 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.

”Kettlewell, you can't let jerks like Freddy run this company. He's just looking to sell banner-s.p.a.ce. This is how the Brit rags write -- it's all meanspirited sniping.” Suzanne had never seen Kettlewell so frustrated. His surfer good looks were fading fast -- he was getting a little paunch on him and his cheeks were sagging off his bones into the beginnings of jowls. His car had pulled up to the end of the driveway and he'd gotten out and walked through the shantytown with the air of a man in a dream. The truckers who pulled in and out all week picking up orders had occasionally had a curious word at the odd little settlement, but for Suzanne it had all but disappeared into her normal experience. Kettlewell made it strange and even a little outrageous, just by his stiff, outraged walk through its streets.

”You think I'm letting *Freddy* drive this decision?” He had spittle flecks on the corners of his mouth. ”Christ, Suzanne, you're supposed to be the adult around here.”

Perry looked up from the floor in front of him, which he had been staring at intently. Suzanne caught his involuntary glare at Kettlewell before he dropped his eyes again. Lester put a big meaty paw on Perry's shoulder. Kettlewell was oblivious.

”Those people can't stay, all right? The shareholders are baying for blood. The f.u.c.king liability -- Christ, what if one of those places burns down? What if one of them knifes another one? We're on the hook for everything they do. We could end up being on the hook for a f.u.c.king *cholera epidemic*.”

Irrationally, Suzanne burned with anger at Freddy. He had written every venal, bilious word with the hope that it would result in a scene just like this one. And not because he had any substantive objection to what was going on: simply because he had a need to deride that which others hailed. He wasn't afflicting the mighty, though: he was taking on the very meekest, people who had *nothing*, including a means of speaking up for themselves.

Perry looked up. ”You've asked me to come up with something new and incredible every three to six months. Well, this is new and incredible. We've built a living lab on our doorstep for exploring an enormous market opportunity to provide low-cost, sustainable technology for use by a substantial segment of the population who have no fixed address. There are millions of American squatters and billions of squatters worldwide. They have money to spend and no one else is trying to get it from them.”

Kettlewell thrust his chin forward. ”How many millions? How much money do they have to spend? How do you know that any of this will make us a single cent? Where's the market research? Was there any? Or did you just invite a hundred hobos to pitch their tent out front of my factory on the strength of your half-a.s.sed guesses?”

Lester held up a hand. ”We don't have any market research, Kettlewell, because we don't have a business-manager on the team anymore. Perry's been taking that over as well as his regular work, and he's been working himself sick for you. We're flying by the seat of our pants here because you haven't sent us a pilot.”

”You need an MBA to tell you not to turn your workplace into a slum?”

Kettlewell said. He was boiling. Suzanne very carefully pulled out her pad and wrote this down. It was all she had, but sometimes it was enough.

Kettlewell noticed. ”Get out,” he said. ”I want to talk with these two alone.”

”No,” Suzanne said. ”That's not our deal. I get to doc.u.ment everything. *That's* the deal.”

Kettlewell glared at her, and then he deflated. He sagged and took two steps to the chair behind Perry's desk and collapsed into it.

”Put the notebook away, Suzanne, please?”

She silently shook her head at him. He locked eyes with her for a moment, then nodded curtly. She resumed writing.

”Guys, the major shareholders are going to start dumping their stock this week. A couple of pension funds, a merchant bank. It's about ten, fifteen percent of the company. When that happens, our ticker price is going to fall by sixty percent or more.”

”They're going to short us because they don't like what we've done here?” Perry said. ”Christ, that's ridiculous!”

Kettlewell sighed and put his face in his hands, scrubbed at his eyes. ”No, Perry, no. They're doing it because they can't figure out how to value us. Our business units have an industry-high return on investment, but there's not enough of them. We've only signed a thousand teams and we wanted ten thousand, so ninety percent of the money we had to spend is sitting in the bank at garbage interest rates. We need to soak up that money with big projects -- the Hoover Dam, Hong Kong Disneyland, the Big Dig. All we've got are little projects.”