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 ï>¿When Maggie resorted to drawing diagrams in the beer slops to
communicate, we decided we'd best go somewhere quieter.  Frankly, with the
pub now apparently playing host to a bus load of travelling beer freaks  -"
all with significant hearing impairments, from the noise they were making 
-" it was that or sit there and text each other.  So I reluctantly finished
my pint of Avalanche and, more to the point, passed up the opportunity of
another.  When we finally got outside, of course, we found that it was
chucking it down, but, then, we needed to have the sort of focused
discussion that would have been difficult on a park bench or at a bus stop,
so ...  well, I did think of suggesting going back to the office but M
pre-empted me and simply led the way back to her place.  Which, to be fair,
was literally around the corner ...  and very pleasant, in a surprisingly
fluffily feminine sort of way.  In fact, it felt homely  -" and, yeah, I
know, it was her home  -" and altogether more Maggie-ish than I'd somehow
expected.  I mean, I suppose that I liked the place, liked ...  well, it
was a shame about the crucifix on the wall, that all I'll say.  We got down
to business, or, at least, we did as soon as Maggie had produced a couple
of large glasses of Bushmills, some very strong coffee and some dark mint
chocolates.  Its that sort of detail, I thought, that shows how little you
know people  -" I mean, I for one would never have guessed that M was the
sort of woman to keep mints around the place, or a row of stuffed toys on
her couch ...  or who'd have gone for such a chintzy couch in the first
place.  My rapid revision of my perception of all things Maggie, continued
apace, especially when she proceeded to sit very close beside me on said
couch  -" almost touching thigh to thigh  -" and, looking at me with
another engaging smile, proceeded to give me Steve's news.  I did my best
to concentrate, given its implications for our future wealth and
happiness.. On one level, it was simple enough, and her account
simultaneously detailed, apposite and brief: It seemed that Simon's latest
move, and our response to it, had crystallised a lot of ill feeling and  -"
more to the point  -" initiated a lot of conversations amongst our peers.
Crucially, these had, necessarily, covered the formerly taboo subject of
funding, an area which had always been brushed under the carpet somewhat,
talking about engineering and technology always being more attractive to
all of us.  Or maybe we all had lots of ideas and none of us had enough
funding, so ...  Whatever the reason, a sort of 'don't ask, don't tell'
policy had become accepted practice regarding our various backers  -" which
was why, I thought, bitterly, that I'd not been warned about Simon in
advance.  Now that people had started talking about the subject, though, it
turned out that we were all basically fishing in the same pond, that there
were remarkably few people who were putting any money at all into the field
and that there was, thus, considerable overlap.  Which possibly explained
why all of us had found it so difficult to get additional, incremental
funds to take our various projects to their next stages  -" those same few
funders were being bombarded by proposals and, basically, waiting to see
what everyone else would do.  And that, according to Maggie's account of
what Steve had told her, was Simon's perceived opportunity.  He had, I
learnt, repeatedly trawled the field  -" we were by no means the first to
receive his offer  -" and seemed to have settled on us simply because we'd
agreed to play.  Or that was Steve's view, anyway  -" personally I thought
that our technology was genuinely better than everyone else's and that
Simon had been well enough informed to appreciate that.  And I said so,
interrupting M's narrative with sufficient passion to provoke an indulgent
smile from her.  "Hey, don't shoot the messenger," she said, leaning over
to pat my knee, a gesture I found distinctly distracting." As far as your
and Tim's creation goes I'm a True Believer, too, remember?  Anyway, its
irrelevant.  According to Steve, the game plan  -" Simon's game plan, that
is  -" was simply to boost one particular group  -" us, as it happens  -"
get a lot of other funders to concentrate on his choice, thereby
withdrawing funding from the non-favoured many ...  and, in the end, be
able to cherry pick their technology.  As in buying up a whole lot of
wrecked dreams, and probably more than a few of the dreamers, and  -"
having thus pretty much cornered the market  -" selling off the best bits
to some mega-corps or another.  According to Steve, 'people' have already
identified a couple of multinationals that Simon has a track record with,
having done this sort of stuff before, and it seems like they're the
preferred beneficiaries." Which threw me, I admit.  On one level it was
hard to take seriously, given the diversity of operations we were talking
about, the variety of technologies they were developing and the fact that
all of them had patents and other IP rights to their ideas.  You couldn't
just take a capitalist scythe to all of that, surely?  Reduce the whole
field to rubble just to make a profit?  Except, of course, that you could.
Everyone we knew was undercapitalised, underfunded, living on a shoe string
and, basically, working for love.  Love of their particular idea, I mean,
the idea of Making A Difference.  Yeah, we all joked about cleaning up and
getting rich but ultimately, I knew, we'd all  -" without exception  -"
sacrifice any material benefits just to see the gear actually in use.  And,
when you think about it, a patent is just a piece of paper if you don't
have any way of building the machine it describes.  So, yes, we were,
collectively and individually, vulnerable.  And I had no illusions that
Simon's apparent interest in our designs gave us any sort of priviliged
position  -" its easy enough to make a company fold, after all, and he
clearly had no interest in the field in the longer term.  Question was,
what, if anything, could we do about it.  I said as much.  "Ah, well," M
replied with a slightly smug grin.  "That's where Steve's stuff gets
interesting.  And, possibly, why that Ruth woman was so upset with you."
"You see," she continued, "there's a weird strength in our weakness; if
most of us get crumpled by Simon's machinations, well,we're looking for new
jobs.  But our funders lose all  -" or certainly most  -" of their money,
which, as capitalist bastards, they really care about." I started to make
some sort of joke about never having seen Maggie as a Trot, before,  -"
although there were a lot of things about her I'd never really seen before
-" but she went on regardless.  "Which means, we  -" all of us  -" have an
opportunity.  We can do something about Simon, simply by organising  -"
rationalising our efforts and consolidating our funders.  Which is an idea
that has been flicking around the ether for the past couple of days and
that, Steve thinks, is what has Simon so worried." I laughed.  Sorry.  I
was impressed by the idea, and rather more by Maggie's impassioned delivery
of it, but ...  it was absurd.  Even if you could consolidate our various
technologies, how on earth would you reconcile our multifarious funders? 
And, if you did succeed in doing all of that, the result, inevitably, would
be a smaller field, with fewer participants  -" and fewer workers.  Which
meant that, for it to succeed, a bunch of us would have to voluntarily bite
the bullet and abandon everything they'd been working on.  Which, frankly,
didn't seem remotely likely, at least to me.  And I was about to say all of
that when two things happened to stop me.  My phone rang  -" number
withheld, naturally  -" and a very bedraggled and ill looking Tim staggered
into the room ...  from what I had to assume was Maggie's bedroom.