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. 
