When Everything Changed by Edward M Wolfe Page A

there’s no shortage of
work. Just retrofitting houses and buildings with their energy efficient
technology will take decades. And speaking of energy, we’re still in the
process of replacing the entire electrical infrastructure, and that’s a
enormous job.
    No one is forced to work, but if they choose not to, they are only
provided with the bare minimum essentials for sustaining life. And I mean
seriously bare minimum. When they told people that they were free to work or
not work and either way they’d be provided for, a lot of people didn’t want to
work and they celebrated. They thought life was going to be a party.
    As it turned out, a lot of people who had never worked before
suddenly changed their minds and developed a work ethic. Instead of food
stamps, cash and free housing of their choice, non-workers get a “nutritious
and edible substance in sufficient quantity to satisfy their biological needs.”
I’m not kidding. They don’t even use the word “food” anywhere in the
description.
    The housing, if you want to call it that, was just as dismal. All
of the “non-producers” were relocated to areas far from the cities where the
Guardians built large structures to serve as living quarters. I’ve never been
in the military, but I’ve seen barracks in movies and these places were much
worse. Rows and rows of cots separated by some kind of partition to make
separate living quarters and a few wooden chairs in each partitioned area.
    No televisions or radios were allowed or provided. The only
activities for people living in the residential centers were either sleeping or
learning in the education pods, or I suppose, they could twiddle their thumbs
or stare at things. If they didn’t want to work or live in the residential
center, they could choose to be exiled to a non-inhabited location of their
choice. The point was that almost nothing would be given to anyone who was
capable of providing for themselves but chose not to. So if they wanted to
rough it in the Amazon or the Sahara, they could. It only took a few months
before the residential centers emptied out.
    In the beginning, no one at all had television. They announced
their presence over every type of electronic communication available; TVs,
radios, computers and cell phones. Then when they released their control over
most of those devices, they didn’t give back television and said it would be a
while before we would be allowed that privilege. A lot of people were outraged
at that and riots broke out. But the rioting only lasted about two minutes
before people began falling to their knees and vomiting. Some people passed
out. A few in every crowd died.
    I looked out my window and it was like seeing a non-violent
massacre taking place. People were dropping to the ground and rolling around
covering their ears, but I couldn’t hear a thing. Bodies littered the street
until whatever it was stopped and people slowly got back up looking sick and
dazed. No one knows what the Guardians did, but there hasn’t been another riot
since that day.
    One rioter I talked to said he’d rather die than feel that sick
ever again. People are still not happy about missing their movies, sports, game
shows, soap operas, and reality TV, etc., but they’re doing what’s expected of
them. They’re probably only doing it for the promise that everything will be
returned once the education is complete. The Guardians know this is a forced compliance,
but they probably figure that people will learn despite themselves.
     One of the greatest benefits we’ve had since their arrival
is that anyone who needs medical treatment gets it immediately.  And
they’ve cured most of the diseases that our doctors and researchers weren’t
even close to understanding. There’s no more cancer or AIDS or several other
previously incurable diseases that I’d never even heard of before. We’re
supposed to live nearly twice as long as we did before.
    People often complained in the past that