33
The conference schedule gave Dale just enough time to get back to his new suite and dump his weighty laptop backpack before dinner. In the last ninety minutes he’d somehow sweated through the clean shirt. Again. He swapped out the software company’s flimsy freebie tee for one of the heavy cotton Detroit Network Services ones he’d brought in his suitcase, sat for two minutes to feebly collect the innumerable thoughts spinning through his skull, and marched himself to the elevator. BSD North attendees filtered into the residence hall lobby, every so often achieving critical mass and moving amoeboid-like out the door with calls of “To dinner!” “See you there!” and “Thirty minutes until open bar!” Dale attached himself to one, and followed the shifting horde down the hill, through the thro
