:: shanty, the others patronized her. When someone needed medical

:: care, they chipped in for a taxi to the free clinic, or someone

:: with a working car drove them. They were like the neighbors of

:: the long-lamented American town, an ideal of civic virtue that is

:: so remote in our ancestry as to have become mythical. There were

:: eyes on the street here, proud residents who knew what everyone

:: was about and saw to it that bad behavior was curbed before it

:: could get started.

::

:: Somehow, it burned down. The fire department won’t investigate,

:: because this was an illegal homestead, so they don’t much care

:: about how the fire started. It took most of the homes, and most

:: of their meager possessions. The water got the rest. The fire

:: department wouldn’t fight the fire at first, because someone at

:: city hall said that the land’s owner wouldn’t let them on the

:: property. As it turns out, the owner of that sad strip of land

:: between an orange grove and the side of a four-lane highway is

:: unknown—a decades-old dispute over title has left it in legal

:: limbo that let the squatters settle there. It’s suspicious all

:: right—various entities had tried to evict the squatters

:: before, but the legal hassles left them in happy limbo. What the

:: law couldn’t accomplish, the fire did.

::

:: The story has a happy ending. The boys have moved the squatters

:: into their factory, and now they have “live-work” condos that

:: look like something Dr Seuss designed [photo gallery]. Like the

:: Central Park shantytown of the last century, these look like they

:: were “constructed by crazy poets and distributed by a whirlwind

:: that had been drinking,” as a press account of the day had it.

::

:: Last year, the city completed a new housing project nearby to

:: here, and social workers descended on the shantytowners to get

:: them to pick up and move to these low-rent high-rises. The

:: shantytowners wouldn’t go: “It was too expensive,” said Mrs X,

:: who doesn’t want her family back in Oklahoma to know she’s

:: squatting with her husband and their young daughter. “We can’t

:: afford any rent, not if we want to put food on the table on

:: what we earn.”

::

:: She made the right decision: the housing project is an urban

:: renewal nightmare, filled with crime and junkies, the kind of

:: place where little old ladies triple-chain their doors and order

:: in groceries that they pay for with direct debit, unwilling to

:: keep any cash around.

::

:: The squatter village was a shantytown, but it was no slum. It was

:: a neighborhood that could be improved. And the boys are doing

:: that: having relocated the village to their grounds, they’re

:: inventing and remixing new techniques for building cheap and

:: homey shelter fast. [profile: ten shanties and the technology

:: inside them]

The response was enormous and passionate. Dozens of readers wrote to tell her that she’d been taken in by these crooks who had stolen the land they squatted. She’d expected that—she’d felt that way herself, when she’d first walked past the shantytown.

But what surprised her more were the message-board posts and emails from homeless people who’d been living in their cars, on the streets, in squatted houses or in shanties. To read these, you’d think that half her readership was sleeping rough and getting online at libraries, Starbuckses, and stumbled wireless networks that they accessed with antique laptops on street-corners.

“Kettlewell’s coming down to see this,” Perry said.

Her stomach lurched. She’d gotten the boys in trouble. “Is he mad?”

“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 flagship 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 shill 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 passed 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-space. 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.