Outlive (The Baggers Trilogy, #1) Read Online Free Page B

do a job that a machine could do for practically nothing? Robots built houses, they crunched numbers to do taxes, they gardened, they cleaned houses, they drove cars, they flew planes, they were cashiers, telemarketers, they were greeters at stores, they knit quilts, they filed forms, they cleaned swimming pools, they washed clothes, they purified water, they painted boats, they printed documents, they refrigerated food, they were installed in cardiac patients’ chests to restart their hearts should they fail, they killed cows for fast food burgers and then cut and packaged the meat, they walked dogs, some of them looked and acted like dogs, they performed vasectomies, fixed plumbing, they repaired automobiles, they changed oil in other robots, they fixed robots, they built other robots, and they did much, much more. Tessa and Baggs weren’t the only people that robots were pushing out of the work force. Unemployment rates were at an all time high. At the same time, however, some people were becoming very rich. These were mostly business owners, who owned the robots who did taxes, cleaned pools, flipped hamburgers, and so on. The gap between wealthy and poor grew with unemployment rates. The emperor and his council recognized that the wealthy had all of the power in the society of New Rome, and so they made policies that aligned with the upper class’s views. For instance, the government deemed it unfair for a young child to be granted an education just because they live within the borders of New Rome. And so, a law was put into place that allowed only the highest echelon of taxpayers the right to send their children to school free of charge. The rest were only allowed an education for a high price. Less than one percent of New Rome’s youth was being educated. This led to a less skilled population, and halted technological development. “So you see,” Baggs was accustomed to saying, “Technological development stopped technological development, in a roundabout sort of way.”
                  Baggs smoked, frowning as he looked around him.
                  The implications of technology and of a lower class that couldn’t rise up out of poverty were everywhere. These were the quintessential features of New Rome. To Baggs, the consequences were forced upon his every sense.
                  He could smell the consequences. They smelled like the Thames River, which used to have fish in it. The smell of the river now reminded him of a time when a rat had died in the walls of his apartment. The smell was sharp and nauseating. There was also the smell of the streets, which reeked of garbage, especially when you passed a gutter.
                  He could feel the consequences. The mega-rich had put in place legislation to make breaking the sound barrier legal over certain parts of the city of London. These corresponded to the parts where the poorest individuals lived. Baggs would be lying in bed at night, sleeping, and would awake with the floor trembling, and the sound of saucers and plates falling from where they were placed in the kitchen to shatter on the floor as a jet broke the sound barrier low over the city. Baggs could feel the consequences of the new technologies and the legislation in his stomach when they couldn’t buy any more food until he had another concert. He could feel it in his pounding heart that morning as he watched Mr. Krass cut his cast off, wondering if his family would starve. Baggs could feel the consequences as they manifested themselves in terrible remorse when he denied Olive a slice a cake every year on her birthday.
                  He could hear the consequences. These usually came at night, when the man in the apartment above them beat his wife. The sounds included her screams, sharp slaps, slurred and angry yelling from her husband (“you bitch whore slut!”), and the sound of heavy objects, such as the woman’s head, being slammed