The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please."
"what are you talking about, I don't owe you anything!"
The door sighed deeply "Yes, but you acquired me from Mr. Joe Chip, who had run up quite a big outstanding bill with every door in the city. As part of a door led crackdown on financial crime Mr. Chip's comings and goings were relegated to a pay as you come and go basis, and you, as part of your purchase of this door from Mr. Chip (or perhaps Mr. Chips estate I don't have all the paperwork) will have to pay as you come and go as well. It's all in the contract"
"Oh yeah, well I got that contract right here!" Johnny was nothing if not organized, he pulled the eink contract out from a nearby cupboard.
At first it was difficult to find the relevant section, as the parts about regarding assumption of previous owner's debts were by default toggled shut and whoever had implemented the contract had decided to make the toggling element a very small dot that looked like it could be a speck of dust attached to the electronic paper. But finally after poking at the dot for some minutes he managed to toggle it, displaying the legalese hidden within, sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee.
"You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug.
Hiro Protagonist and Vitaly Chernobyl, roommates, are chilling out in their home, a spacious 20-by-30 in a U-Stor-It in Inglewood, California. The room has a concrete slab floor, corrugated steel walls separating it from the neighboring units, and-this is a mark of distinction and luxury -- a roll-up steel door that faces northwest, giving them a few red rays at times like this, when the sun is setting over LAX. From time to time, a 777 or a Sukhoi/Kawasaki Hypersonic Transport will taxi in front of the sun and block the sunset with its rudder, or just mangle the red light with its jet exhaust, braiding the parallel rays into a dappled pattern on the wall.But there are worse places to live.
There are much worse places right here in this U-Stor-It. Only the big units like this one have their own doors. Most ofthem are accessed via a communal loading dock that leads to a maze of wide corrugated-steel hallways and freight elevators. These are slum housing, 5-by-lOs and 10-by-lOs where Yanoama tribespersons cook beans and parboil fistfuls of coca leaves over heaps of burning lottery tickets.
It is whispered that in the old days, when the U-Stor-It was actually used for its intended purpose (namely, providing cheap extra storage space to Californians with too many material goods), certain entrepreneurs came to the front office, rented out 1O-by-lOs using fake IDs, filled them up with steel drums full of toxic chemical waste, and then abandoned them, leaving the problem for the U-Stor-It Corporation to handle. According to these rumors, U-Stor-It just padlocked those units and wrote them off. Now, the immigrants claim,certain units remain haunted by this chemical specter. It is a story they tell their children, to keep them from trying to break into padlocked units.
"what are you talking about, I don't owe you anything!"
The door sighed deeply "Yes, but you acquired me from Mr. Joe Chip, who had run up quite a big outstanding bill with every door in the city. As part of a door led crackdown on financial crime Mr. Chip's comings and goings were relegated to a pay as you come and go basis, and you, as part of your purchase of this door from Mr. Chip (or perhaps Mr. Chips estate I don't have all the paperwork) will have to pay as you come and go as well. It's all in the contract"
"Oh yeah, well I got that contract right here!" Johnny was nothing if not organized, he pulled the eink contract out from a nearby cupboard.
At first it was difficult to find the relevant section, as the parts about regarding assumption of previous owner's debts were by default toggled shut and whoever had implemented the contract had decided to make the toggling element a very small dot that looked like it could be a speck of dust attached to the electronic paper. But finally after poking at the dot for some minutes he managed to toggle it, displaying the legalese hidden within, sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee.
"You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug.