w00t! Charlie Stross and I have finished the complete first draft of Unwirer, the story we collaborated on in public, via Movable Type blog. The first draft clocks in at nearly 11,000 words, and that means we've got to trim 4,500 words before we can turn it in. We're likely going to be doing that by email, though, so until the antho comes out, this is the only draft you're gonna get!
Marcel dropped his fork, clattering. "You're going to take your pet blonde on a repeater splice and show her everything and you're afraid to let me help you run a new fat pipe in? What's the matter, I don't smell good enough?"
"Listen." Roscoe stood up, and Marcel tensed — but rather than move towards him, Roscoe turned to the pizza box. "Get the *Wall Street Journal* on our side and we have some credibility. A crack in the wall. Legitimacy. Do you know what that means, kid? You can't buy it. But run another fat pipe into town and we have a idle capacity, upstream dealers who want to know what the hell we're pissing around with, another fiber or laser link to lose to cop-induced backhoe fade, and about fifty percent higher probability of the whole network getting kicked over because the mundanes will rat us out to the FCC over their TV reception. Do you want that?" He picked another cooling pizza slice out of the box. "Do you really want that?"
