map of Kensington Market on the unmade bed. “I’ve got access points here, here, here, and here. Another eight or ten and I’ll have the whole Market covered. Then I’m going to head north, cover the U of T campus, and push east towards Yonge Street. Bay Street and University Avenue are going to be tough—how can I convince bankers to let me plug this by their windows?”

“Kurt,” Alan said, “I suspect that the journey to University Avenue is going to be a lot slower than you expect it to be.”

Kurt jutted his jaw out. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“There’s a lot of real estate between here and there. A lot of trees and high-rises, office towers and empty lots. You’re going to have to knock on doors every couple hundred meters—at best—and convince them to let you install one of these boxes, made from garbage, and plug it in, to participate in what?”

“Democratic communication!” Kurt said.

“Ah, well, my guess is that most of the people who you’ll need to convince won’t really care much about that. Won’t be able to make that abstract notion concrete.”

Kurt mumbled into his chest. Alan could see that he was fuming.

“Just because you don’t have the vision to appreciate this—”

Alan held up his hand. “Stop right there. I never said anything of the sort. I think that this is big and exciting and looks like a lot of fun. I think that ringing doorbells and talking people into letting me nail an access point to their walls sounds like a lot of fun. Really, I’m not kidding.

“But this is a journey, not a destination. The value you’ll get out of this will be more in the doing than the having done. The having done’s going to take decades, I’d guess. But the doing’s going to be something.” Alan’s smile was so broad it ached. The idea had seized him. He was drunk on it.

The buzzer sounded and Kurt got up to answer it. Alan craned his neck to see a pair of bearded neohippies in rasta hats. 

“Are you Kurt?” one asked.

“Yeah, dude, I’m Kurt.”

“Marcel told us that we could make some money here? We’re trying to raise bus fare to Burning Man? We could really use the work?”

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