Read Online April 5: A Depth of Understanding by Mackey Chandler - Free Book Online

school none of the cafeteria ladies were allowed to talk to us. They would tell us if our lunch choices were outside the guidelines, but never just friendly chat. In fact the last school I went to we weren't allowed to talk at lunch. We still would sign and point and do stuff like split up something we hated on a couple trays so the monitor didn't see us throw away too much. You got written up if you wasted too much," Iaan explained.
    "I can't see how that is much different than being in prison," April said.
    Iaan laughed out loud, shocked at that. "You couldn't say that either! If you did you'd be labeled antisocial. Of course I guess the guys in real prison are already so solidly antisocial it wouldn't matter what they say. I mean, what else are they going to do to them?"
    "Stick them in solitary?" their dad asked.
    "Yeah, like detention," Iaan agreed, frowning at the new thought.
    "And your parents wouldn't have been upset to know you were visiting with a service worker?" Matt asked.
    "Not at all. You might have to reconsider how you regard people here. Some of the things that were true on Earth may not be here. There aren't a lot of stupid people on Home, even if their job description sounds menial to you. Even for something like corridor maintenance and cleaning, or supply and delivery, they screen for work history and psychological profile. They have more applicants than positions so they can be picky. People with degrees accept manual labor to get up here. You don't get weirdos, stinks and thieves. People who can't get along or manage to hide a problem end up back down on the mud ball pretty quickly."
     "Now Ruby, as an example, is pretty sharp. She grew up in Detroit, spent some time as a loadmaster in the air force and was a college professor teaching Medieval music before she came to Home. But if you called her Doctor Dixon she might smack you with a spatula. She's always been very insightful about people and what motivates them. I've learned a lot from her and she was never shy to tell me when I was out of my depth."
    "OK, things are different up here. That's why we're here, but I can see it's going to be true of a whole lot of little things I hadn't planned on being different," Matt admitted.
    "It's true, we are getting more people now who are self selecting to come to Home, instead of being hired. But there are still a lot of barriers to really undesirable people coming in. If you don't have a job or a sponsor it takes quite a bit of money to live here until you can establish yourself. You have to be smart or lucky or ruthless enough to get that much money. Things on Earth are making it harder all the time for an average person to accumulate much wealth. That's why you are here right? They were going to make it hard for you to make an honest living."
    "Yes, I don't know if you'd classify me as smart or lucky, but I could see every time I made more money they were going to take more. I'm moving my book sales to other countries and the new ones I'm already working on will never have any connection to the USNA. They simply won't have any handle on me to collect the money the court awarded. They may try to block my North American sales, but almost everyone now can circumvent those sort of controls if they want to. There are all sorts of black markets and grey markets and bartering."
    "I'm trying to understand how the Earth economy works. My partner Jeff has me studying economics and I read the news feeds and some of the private journals, but nobody will speak frankly about how the underground economy works, or how big it really is. I know my understanding is superficial. I can't predict what Earthies will do. But nobody publishes how things really work, or it's actually a crime to say publicly how it works, so how is anybody supposed to get a depth of understanding? If you'd explain the real mechanics of it to me it would be very helpful. I can trade you help with how things work up here. Does that sound